Creativity; the only way to success

Creativity has always been the root for success; it is mother of all expertise and is the main source of creation. It is creativity of an institute or any functioning body which make it differ from other. The reason why I am trying to make the term ‘Creativity’ clear is because I want the reader to understand its vital role in creation of any functioning body and also help it stand aside and lead the market.

In the field of Marketing, Branding and advertising creativity has always played the key role. With the rapid growth of Internet marketing it has become more easy yet difficult for one to advertise, promote and Brand it. Easy is when you have to do nothing but just spending fortunes over Search engine marketing and promoting and branding your company (through services like Pay per click and lead generation), but it is difficult when you have to promote and brand your company online through Search engine optimization and social media networking, because here you have to use your creativity and your power of management.

Creativity is not something which is available online and one can just go and buy it through internet marketing, but it is something which is very difficult to get. To solve these problems of Brand promotion and marketing there are many Branding consultancy company all over the world, but among many Digital Branding Companies in India, Creative-Edge, whose main aim is Brand promotion through Digital media marketing, SEO, SEM and Social media networking with the help of creative ideas and thoughts which the company together with the help of staffs who are not only creative but also dedicated, plan and execute.

Today technology has enabled us to promote and market companies in different ways but it is Planning that counts, how and where to advertise, where to use your creativity is the main part of marketing strategies, one can achieve best results in least available technology if planning and timing is correct. Creative-Edge is one such firm which helps companies and institutes advertise and Brand their company name to the best with least available resource and minimal time.

Sources : http://www.creative-edge.in/

Social Media Marketing – 5 Steps Bloggers Should Take To Achieve Results Easily

Social media marketing should be a part of your blogging activities, if you plan to see success in the long run. It doesn’t take one arm of marketing to earn a living, but multiple arms can yield greater results. Majority of blogger are into social media marketing, but only a few are seeing the results. We often wonder what’s going on around the blogosphere, when all efforts we put in proves abortive.
I’ve been there before; I know what it means to be on the downside where it seems as though time is being wasted.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can still get the full benefits of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin if you persevere. Success often doesn’t come overnight, it takes sometime but the time of waiting is never a waste – at least when you’ve a clear direction.
I want to show you how you can easily multiply your success using social media marketing, even when your blog is pretty new. Everyone can succeed online, once the right steps are taken. I want to share the right steps, get ready to take action.

1. Define “Social”

You’ve to give that word a meaning. What do you think “social” means? Even a 10-year old knows the meaning. “Social” mans to network, to connect, and mingle with others who share the same feelings, taste and discipline like you.
You see, until you know why you’re there in the first place, you won’t get any tangible result from been there. I’ve read a lot of reports and articles that promise to make you thousands of dollars, from twitter.
How possible could it be?
Anyone can make money online, using social media networks as a marketing channel, but it’s not the way we’ve been spoon-fed. You need to know the reason why you’re there. You’re there to connect and share your expertise with others. Connecting is the first, selling is not the second, but the fourth.

2. Designate Tasks

Like I said above, you don’t sell immediately on social media networks. When you connect with someone, a lot of things could be moving in their minds at that point, your role is to channel their thoughts and bring it under control. How?
By designating tasks properly!
That sounds weird believe me, but I’m here to make it a lot fun. We are all here to teach and learn. The mind is able to accommodate 10s of ideas at a go, but only one unique idea has the ability to produce result. You’ve to gum the exact idea you want for your prospects, right inside their minds.
Present them with the right solution, in an interesting way. By approaching social media users this way, you would be seen as a care-taker who understands how tenants feel.

3. Dare To Ask

We all know that the right questions always produce the right answers. If you are not creative enough, why should you be nailed on the cross? There are alternatives to knowing the minds of your prospects and that is by asking questions.
But when you ask questions, ask open-ended questions. Give enough room for diversification.
An example of an open-ended question is: what is your favorite color?
A closed-ended question goes thus: Is blue your favorite color?
By making your questions open, your prospects can be able to supply the right answers without you forcing them or giving options. Dare to ask questions today – the right answer for your next product launch is around the corner.

4. Design a Product

Whenever someone gives you feedback of what they want, it becomes easier to package the right solutions for them. You asked a question above (open-ended), now is the right time to create a product.
You need a product to succeed as a social media marketer.
It’s going to be your channel of networking, connecting and problem solving. If you don’t have a problem, your prospects would perceive you as an average entrepreneur. People don’t buy from an average person; you need to be the best in your chosen niche before you can be trusted.

You can create a short report, software, a membership site and market it to your social media followers.  The conversion rate was awesome. Just make sure your report is superb, informative and interesting – you’ll sell and make more money guaranteed.

5. Discrete Tracking

You need to track your success-rate with social media marketing. Whatever effort you put into converting any fan into email subscriber, and eventually into a customer ought to be tracked. This helps you to know what’s working for you and what should be relegated to the bottom.

Discrete tracking makes use of different marketing channels to deliver the product. If you use article and video marketing to distribute your product, you should track to determine the campaign that works well.

Source: Michael Chibuzor is a Social Media examiner. He also writes about coupon blog that shares free discount deals. 

How Search-Like Are Social Media Sites?

Like search? Who doesn’t — great traffic, huge brand value and an audience ready to convert. Like social media? What’s not to like — huge growth, tons of buzz and an entire new marketing frontier that is opening up. For the search marketer looking at social media, how does it measure up? Which social media sites are most “search like?” This article looks at the issue and tries to chart it all out for easy comparison.
To answer, let’s start with some definitions. The terms “social media” and “social media site” are often used to describe web sites and online services that can be radically different from each other. Facebook gets grouped with Flickr because they’re both “social.” Social, yes — but there are subcategories that are important to know.
This is how I breakdown social media sites, based on watching the space and talking with social media marketers over the past few years:

• Social News Sites (such as Digg, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz)
• Social Bookmarking Sites (such as Delicious, StumbleUpon)
• Social Networking (such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
• Social Knowledge (such as Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers)
• Social Sharing (such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Urban Spoon, Yelp)

I’ll define these further as I go along. But the key question is this. How do these sites measure up against search?
I like charts, so I wanted to see if I could somehow graphically illustrate where the sites overlap with search in various ways. To do so, I considered three metrics:

• Traffic: How many visitors do they drive?
• Demand/Search Intent: How likely are those visitors to be after something specific?
• Branding: How can these sites influence branding by appearing in search results?

Start Your Charting: The Search Engines
For a baseline, the chart below starts with Google and search engines themselves:

For these charts, the bigger the circle, the more traffic a type of site (search, social bookmarking, etc.) sends. The circles aren’t precise — they just give you a rough idea if something will send lots of traffic or not. Google drives tons.
As for demand, the beauty of search is that people go to search engines in search of something specific. They’re ready to convert, which is why search visitors are so highly valued. On the charts, the more a source sends people with strong “search intent” or “demand,” the more the site will be shown to the left.
Finally, branding. Various studies show search can have branding value. There are few stories of entirely new brands being built from search, but brand lift has been shown in various ways. More important, brands can be hurt by bad reviews that show up in search and helped by positive references. Since every search listing on a search engine has brand potential, search is very high in brand value — and so shown at the top of the chart.
Social News Sites & Search
Social news sites are where people go to share current news topics or information. Digg is the classic example, where stories are voted on by others. Reddit is another example. For internet marketers, we run our own Sphinn social news site. How do these chart against search?

There’s no question that social news sites can drive huge amounts traffic. The Digg Effect is when a site gets so many visitors from Digg that it crashes. So on the chart, a big traffic circle for social news sites.
Social news also has some degree of search intent. That because people do go to social news sites in search of something — news. They just don’t necessarily know exactly what news they want. Rather than exhibiting search behavior (“I know exactly what I want”), they’re in discovery mode (“I want something in general, but I don’t know exactly what that is”).
If you have news content that matches the serendipity of someone’s interest, you may have a good converting person. Having said this, visitors from Digg are notorious for driving down ad conversion rates. They may be interested in your content, but your ads? Not so much.
So for demand and search intent, I put social news sites about midway down the line. How about branding? Well, content at social news sites can rank well in search engines. When I looked recently, I wasn’t finding that this was so much an issue for brand names. For example, a search for apple wasn’t getting me a page from Digg that outranked the official Apple site. But for product “issues,” it’s more noticeable.

Consider this story at Digg:

It appears in the top results at Google for a search on poison cup of noodles:

If someone does that search, curious about what happened, then clicks over to the Digg story, they find brand inspiring comments like this:

Remember when Apple dropped Firewire from new Macbooks? That hit Digg, which a few weeks ago put Digg in the top results on Google for apple firewire (right now it’s on the second page of results):

What do those who click from Google over to Digg discover?

If you’re concerned about your brand, you have to be concerned about social news sites. You’re being discussed on them, and even those who aren’t social news “regulars” may be driven to these discussions via search engines.
Social Bookmarking Sites & Search
Social bookmarking sites are very similar to social news sites with one key distinction. Content doesn’t necessarily have to be new. Plenty of stuff on Delicious or StumbleUpon isn’t new in general — it’s just new to someone who recently discovers it and shares with others. How do social bookmarketing sites plot against search?

In general, the sites can send tons of traffic. Delicious isn’t known for crashing servers like Digg, but it still can generate a noticeable traffic spike. StumbleUpon can produce for a one-time spike and be the gift that keeps on giving, sending lots of people to a site over time. Given this, I feel a big circle for traffic makes sense.
As for search demand, I see that as low. People aren’t even interested in a particular topic — news — but rather what’s being shared in general and may have no particular burning desire for that. There are exceptions. Places like StumbleUpon and Delicoius both have categories that allow people to narrow their browsing into interest area. But overall, I wouldn’t say these sites are heavily “search-like.”
As for branding, I’ve not typically seen these types of sites showing up in results to the degree content from social news sites has (and even they feel like they’ve had declining visibility over the past year). Potentially, data from social bookmarking sites might be used to enhance listings similar to a test that Yahoo ran last year:

Social Networking Sites & Search
Social networking sites are where people are connecting with other people. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn all have a variety of features, but at their core, they allow you to network with friends, family, coworkers and people who want to be your friends, family and coworkers. How search-like are they?

As you can see, I’ve rated their traffic as very low. It’s not that you can’t find lots of people at these sites. Heck, our own Facebook group for Search Engine Land has nearly 3,000 members. Over at our LinkedIn group, we have over 4,000 members. Social networking sites are hives of activity. But that activity seems to stay within the network, rather than flowing outward to external web sites. No one talks about “The Facebook Effect” having crashed their web server. For a search marketer, this may mean adjusting to the fact that you have to maintain a presence within these networks to fully tap into them.
In terms of search demand, I think the social networking sites have very low levels here. There is some sense of discovery that goes on. People share interesting news items or discussions in these places. You can have high search intent when they are used to find someone or learn more about a particular person. But when that water pipe breaks, and you need a plumber? You’re probably not hitting Facebook immediately looking for help.
Let me add that I visited Facebook last month and had a good discussion about how their ads can flow into search intent. As said, people might not immediately turn to a social networking site to find a product or solution. But one story they told me resonated, about how a moving company targeted college freshmen, sophomores and juniors with ads. Down the line, when these people inevitably needed a moving company, the ads apparently had created a strong awareness, and the company had a good success.
It’s something to consider. But for that immediate search demand that a search marketer is after, I don’t think you’ll find it on social networking sites. Instead, adjust your expectations and tactics, so that you can tap into the less immediate desire.
As for branding, again, there can be strong branding opportunities within these networking sites. But externally, I’ve yet to see them register much of an impact in search results. I don’t see Facebook or LinkedIn discussions about products coming up regularly in the searches that I do, nor do I tend to see pages within these sites coming back on searches for brand names. This might change over time, as the networks open more and more of their internal pages up to search engines.
Social Knowledge Sites & Search
Social knowledge sites are places where people are sharing answers. Wikipedia is the classic example, and Yahoo Answers is another good one. Where do they sit compared to search?

In terms of traffic, I give them a medium circle. This comes from having seen and heard marketers over time say that these places drive noticeable amounts of traffic. They don’t crash your servers, but they do show up on the radar screen of traffic drivers.
As for search intent, these places all register high to me. People go to them seeking answers to questions they have. That’s the core of what search provides. If you’re one of the lucky answers, that puts you in front of an audience prequalified to convert.
They also have high branding value. I always get a laugh when talking search to audiences, showing a Wikipedia page in the top results at Google and joking that by law, Google’s required to show Wikipedia in the top ten. I’m far from the only one to make that joke. Do a search, you’ll bang your knees against a Wikipedia entry. Yahoo Answer results often come up, as well, especially for searches that are phrased as questions. In both cases, this means your brand might be discussed at these sites — with searchers flowing over to them — so it’s something to be monitored.
Social Sharing Sites & Search
Social sharing sites, to me, are places where people are — well — sharing stuff! You share video at YouTube, pictures at Flickr and whatever’s on your mind (for better or worse) at Twitter. How do they stack up against search?

Like social knowledge site, I give them a medium circle on the traffic front. They send noticeable amounts of traffic but aren’t crashing servers. Note that this can vary within the services themselves. A YouTube video might get thousands or millions of views from those watching a clip at YouTube itself, rather than embedded on a site.
Search intent is high. People are often actively seeking a photo, a video or something at these places. Even at Twitter, search provides a way to seek out news and buzz.
Branding? These sites do very well in the search engines. Consider a search for jetblue, where currently the company’s official site is listed, along with its Twitter account and its YouTube channel. That gives the company control of 30% of the search results page — more ways for people to find them and potentially pushing out negative comments (though not always — there’s still a news article about a man who is suing over accusations he had to sit in the toilet for 90 minutes on a flight).
Consider also a search for diet coke on Google:

The screenshot above shows how video content shows in the top results. Neither is from Coke itself. Instead, both are about mixing Diet Coke and Mentos, video content from non-Coke sources.
Now, I seem to recall that Coke wasn’t that found of the Diet Coke-Mentos mixing craze. I couldn’t find a reference about that, so I might be wrong. But if so, I’d say get over it. Produce the biggest Diet Coke-Mentos experiment ever, one that is so amazing that the video of it will gain links and jump over into the top listings at Google.
That would give Coke more control over its brand — a pretty good thing when you consider the current search results features for negative articles about Diet Coke and health impacts (makes me glad I took my diet from Diet Coke!). Social sharing sites provide an opportunity for brand owners to tap into search — you’ve got to consider them.

Resource: http://searchengineland.com/