Marketing Mars

There would be a time that every one would have felt that they have tons of articles to write, and no time for anything else. Will the enthusiasm flow for a seasoned blogger, or after blogging for a considerable long time? I guess that the answer may vary over this, but definitely the answer would be ” less interested ” or ” have little time for it ” or “No posts“.
This is a general complaint from a single blogger, if he is the sole writer of the blog, and this is rarely seen in a blog where many people write to it.

Why is there this slump to the blogs? Is it self-made or has time bound your hands? I guess every one will have their own reason to quote for the slump in their blog, but if this is made as a regular habit, just like looking up the mail, or messaging over the net this will look very simple and never will the term slump come up.

The blogs just not help us updating our Knowledge Base, but also help others who are desperately looking out for knowledge.

1. Plan the Contents: It is better to start a blog that has juice to a greater extent, and the one that can spell its effect long term. If there are any posts that are incomplete then complete them.

2. Take a break: It is alright to take a break if you feel that you are out of contents or have felt bored about blogging. A small break can revitalize your thoughts and you can come up with new contents. But be very careful in mentioning your readers that you will not be posting for ‘Y’ number of days. Else they can unsubscribe from your article or think that you have stopped writing. Its important to retain old visitors and more important is to woo new visitors to your site.

3. Broaden the blog base: Initially one might have restricted to a single topic, which is practically difficult to target regularly. SO its better to broaden the base and write more topics in relation to the main topic we have selected. Example, if we are writing on electronic goods, its wise to broaden the base and extending to also write about ROBOTS that are just not electronic products, but is a Mechatronic product. This widens the scope of more posts, and also many people can get attracted to your blog. But be careful of not broadening the topics to a very general platform, which can make the reader feel that the blog has all crap under the sun which may not be very specific.

4. Don’t clutter: If there are many sub topics that you feel cant be addressed effectively, then plan a topic for each day of the week, which can make you address many topics over the week, and also that there are a lot more chances that you can find topics to be written over a week’s time. This works only if the blog is not in the line of any updating blogs like the News.

5. Friendly blogging: Ask some of the trusted ones among your friends and/ or colleagues to help posting for you as guests. Or you can talk about some of the problems that your visitors might have in the field of interest (what your blogs talk about), and solve them.

6. Revisit the Blogs: If any changes are to be made to the blogs already written, better do it at a regular interval, or that if you are able to add some more stuff to it, then go ahead and do the required changes.

16. Keyword –> Keyword is the term used for words included in a web page that would match words used by web surfers in finding that web page (via a search engine). Identifying appropriate keywords and using them on a web site is important for search engine optimization. Keywords can simply be words included in the body text of the document, or added to the header using meta tags to increase the number of keywords. Using keywords in the title tag is also important. Selecting keywords, that match your target audiences’ use of the web when searching your product, is a critical marketing tactic.

17. Marginal Costs –> Marginal costs are the costs associated with creating an additional unit of product. This is similar to variable costs, which are the costs that increase directly with the increase in production (unlike fixed costs). Digital products typically have very low marginal costs, when compared with traditional goods (materials, labor etc.) and if the product is distributed via a web site, then the marginal costs can be zero. The consumer is bearing the distribution costs, and there are no packaging costs. This is why companies are able to market their products for free on their web sites, in order to try to entice further purchases at a later time (in the hopes of creating lock-in perhaps).

18. Marketing Mix –> A Marketing Mix is the combination of product offerings used to reach a target market for the organization. The marketing mix comprises the Product (what the actual offering comprises), Price (the value exchanged for that offering), Promotion (the means of communicating that offering to the target audience, promotional mix) and distribution (also known as Place, the means of having the product offering available to the target audience). The marketing mix is also known as the four P’s.

19. Opportunity Costs –> Opportunity costs refer to the costs associated with giving up an opportunity. They are relevant in the marketing of digital products when one considers the value lost to the company when giving away a product for free. Since digital goods primarily consist of fixed costs and often have zero marginal costs then marketing strategy often dictates to give-away a version of the product to encourage consumers to upgrade at a later time (assuming lock-in etc.) The only cost incurred here would be the opportunity cost of the lost revenue from the consumers that would have paid for this version of the product in the first place. To avoid this situation, companies typically segment their markets, and offer a free product, with limited functionality (and no customer support or documentation) to a casual user group, and an upgraded version, at a price, with customer support etc. to a more sophisticated customer. The company will hope the casual users will upgrade to the upgraded version as they become more sophisticated users and more reliant on the product. They also assume the sophisticated user will not be satisfied with the free version, due to its lack of functionality. Eg: blogger and jot.

20. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) –> SEM comprises SEO and search engine advertising. Search engine advertising, in its current model, typically uses text-based advertisements that the marketer bids on based on the keywords the marketer wants to associate with the advertisement (contextual advertising). The business model is typically PPC. Goto.com pioneered the PPC model for search engine advertising. Goto.com was purchased by Overture which was ultimately purchased by Yahoo! Google’s Google Adwords is the main competitor.
Both these networks supply advertisements for other sites.

21. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) –> SEO refers to the art of designing a web-site for better listings in search engines. This includes ensuring you have the appropriate keywords in the body text of the site, in the title tag and the meta tags. Google’s PageRank algorithm also rewards sites that have inbound links, and even considers the anchor text of the inbound links. Search engines also reward sites with fresh content. Regularly updated blogs therefore serve as a good SEO tool.

22. Shopping Cart Abandonment –> Shopping Cart Abandonment refers to the loss of a customer who is going through the check-out process of an online transaction. Some statistics suggest that this can be as high as 75%. It is principally caused by poor usability of the site and the check-out process (too time consuming, too many clicks), and hidden shipping charges.

23. (Web) Spider –> A spider (also known as a crawler) is used by a search engine to
identify web pages in order to be cataloged in the database of the search engine (web site designers can also submit web pages to be cataloged in a search engine). Spiders therefore help search engines to keep up with the evolution of web content by crawling through the web seeking new sites. To control spiders in terms of cataloging a web site, a designer can include a robots.txt file that instructs a spider to exclude pages that are not to be cataloged.

24. Text Advertisements –> Text advertisements are text links that are paid for by the sponsors of the target page of the advertisement. They are a form of advertisement that can be considered more contextual (assuming the text link is relevant to the subject of the web page), and less obtrusive than other forms of advertising on the web. Text advertisements can also be used for affiliate advertising and the emerging search engine advertising programs from Google Adwords and Overture.

25. underdelivery –> delivery of less impressions, visitors, or conversions than contracted for a specified period of time.

26. Viral Marketing –> Is a marketing technique that takes advantage of a marketer’s
customers in promoting the product. This technique was pioneered by Hotmail. Hotmail
launched its free web-based e-mail service with the tag line (at the bottom of each e-mail) “Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.” As customers used this e-mail service, and were e-mailing others, they were effectively sending an advertisement for the product. This attracted new customers, who repeated the process. Once a critical mass of consumers were using Hotmail, a tipping point was reached, where the number of new users started to increase non-linearly. Hotmail soon became the fastest growing media company in history.

27. Web 2.0 –> Web 2.0 comprises technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasting and RSS. It is a term that tries to embrace a participatory web; a web where all can now participate in content creation and consumption. It thus presumes that Web 1.0 was a ’static’ environment.

28. Web Analytics –> Web Analytics is the field of data mining the data that is generated from those navigating a web-site. Web Analytics allows a site designer to understand the flow of those going through a site, essentially measuring the behavior of the site’s users. Which pages are most popular, which are the entry and exit points, and which are the referrer URLs. Metrics used include page views, hits, sessions and impressions. There are a number of software providers who provide web analytics tools, and a host should also provide this service to its clients.

29. Weblog (blog) –> A blog is a website that is updated frequently by its author, in a standard format, with the most recent entry at the top, and older entries archived. Each entry is a unique URL, a permalink. Entries also include trackbacks and the option for allowing comments. Blogging software (such as Blogger.com and typepad.com) allow anyone the opportunity to be a publisher on the web (no need to know html), thus truly democratizing the process of publishing information (a potential threat to traditional media organizations). Blogs are used to annotate and collect news sources across the web; used as personal journals and for sharing experiences; and used by businesses to reach out to their customers and engage in conversations.

30. Word of Mouth Marketing –> Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) refers to the marketing that can be gained by actively engaging customers to share insights with each other (create buzz that goes viral). WOMM has clearly been around since the inception of marketing, but has gained more prominence with the evolution of the internet, and the ease with which customers can share their stories. Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs and News Readers are enabling WOMM. Discussion Boards have helped customers form communities. Good WOMM relies on great products that customers willingly evangelize. Marketers have been prone to try to ‘effect’ this by incentivizing ‘fake’ customers to talk about their products. This can backfire.

Blogging is not just for the tech savvy person, or who is more technical. Today the world of blog has expanded, and even the non-technical person can use it with ease. There are a lots of tools also available to do the job, to an extent that it looks almost like a professional blogger to a non-technical blogger. Blogging is not just about writing, but reading too. Using the power of RSS feeds (RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication) and feed readers, company can search once and subscribe to feeds delivering real-time news and information on your industry and your competition.
If you are already having a website of yours, or are finding any info on a company what do you do? The most expected answer is search through the GOOGLE. On the other hand do we really do the SELF-TEST, of keying words into the google and finding if our company features into all those key words? Many wont be doing this. We can see that our company featuring in the latter half of the page or beyond the 1st page, then you have just made the page, not putting the required effort into it. All those people whose websites are featured in the top slot doesn’t remain in the same slot if a regular updation isn’t done on it. what we can say is, a web page transforming into a cob-web.
At this stage of fading over the internet, the business owners catch hold of webmaster or design company that created the site. Many a times its not the fault of these people. If regular posts dont go into the web page, what can a designer do?

There are many techniques to raise the ranking of the blog. A simple thing called SEO or the Search Engine Optimization. Along with this, regular posting of Quality contents rises the ranks. Generally 3 to 5 postings makes a good rise in the ranks. As more people find and link to your quality posts, they become more “relevant” to the search engines and the site rises in the rankings. By linking your blog site to your corporate website, you can complete the circle and drive more people through the front door. Of course, simply posting random thoughts about the weather will not attract the masses.
Business blogging is really two-way communication between a business and its clients or potential clients. Blogs provide the platform for your company to become more findable and for the public at large to comment and link to what they’re reading. The most common blogging platforms today are: - Blogger(www.blogger.com), WordPress ( www.wordpress.com), and Typepad (www.typepad.com). Although each one have their own strengths and weaknesses, they allow to create and upload at zero or no upfront costs. It might be that we might transform all of our company’s (or corporate site) to blog, its the findability or searchability the main concern for which we blog.

Try being different/unique in your approach. like, Share stories that highlight interesting customer service experiences. Share your unique ability to resolve problems and satisfy customer demands. Share what went wrong at what place and how it was fixed by you and what you learnt out of it. Discuss the specialty in the solutions that you provide, or solutions that were special to you/ your company. highlight the special offer that your company is floating. A blog need not be a blog. Some of the photographs that show that not only you care for the customer and provide all the solutions that they need, but also like a cool dude the next door, who can be approached for any help. If your blog is more friendly and sharing informative information, you can be on top. You can also feature all those special thanks that the client gave you, or the talents that your company people have other than expertise in giving the right kind of solutions to the problems at the right time. All these features might really boost the relation of the outsider with the company.

when we are considering a redesigning the blog, we must keep certain things in mind. we
generally don’t touch or do any changes with the traditional blog layout, like the header,
content panel, sidebar… . We must do a makeover the appearance from the traditional blog.
They are: -

1. DECLUTTERING : we must concentrate on the area thats more cluttered area.
Generally it’ll be the sidebar. try decluttering this area, by moving a few things from
this, to any other parts of the blog, that can hold the information well, as well as its
readable. After this, thought the information is scattered, it’d have all the information in
the page, and more appealing and pleasure to read through.

2. Visibility of the most important content : what to do to make the page look more
appealing to the visitor of your blog ? The most important thing is, to keep the main and
important contents in the most noticeable area, and the links in its place.

3.Maximum exposure for ads: Who would not love to earn little more bucks through
their blogs? There are already One of the drawbacks of using premade themes is that you have
to force your ads and affiliate links into a crowded design. But with your own customized
design, you keep the control in your hands.

WHAT THINGS THAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO TOO MUCH TO YOUR BLOG: -

We must not do too many changes that looks like a new blog even to the old
customer or visitor. The changes must be minimally effective. If you go wild with a lots of
assorted ads and affiliate links and your new visitors dismiss your blog as an MFA(made for
AdSence) site. The better you make your site, more people visit. If we, in our enthusiasm
to earn more revenue, and take the flak of readers.

Also, the changes must not be either too frequent or once is a decade. Also that, we have to
test the new template change- look and feel of the new template, and ask some of the close
friends who are regular in reading your blog, to evaluate the change, as more appealing or
the opposite. there are cases that, if you are interested in changing the look, and choose a
wrong one that the readers don’t like, there are chances of loosing many readers, because i
feel that “first appearance is the best appearance”. Also the new design may not pull new
readers, if it doesn’t match their taste. After all, we have to keep in mind that, we are not
blogging just because of us, but for others also.

The title should always go hand-in-hand with the topics chosen n posted. The reader must not
feel the break in the chain with the posting and the blog name.
Its really important to make few changes to the blog, to keep the most important things up
and at the most important place. along with this, the blog must not loose the crux of its
posts.