The vending cart wars: A lesson on the limits of social media

The problem started when the Schnitzel & Things Truck drove up to start selling food and found some of the established vendors on the block didn’t appreciate his presence. The Schnitzel owner tells  Midtown Lunch:

“We got harassed by 4 different dudes as soon as we showed up.. But we weren’t having it man.. Whatever, it was the usual, you know the “I’ve been on this block for 15 years” routine:) and??? You want us to move because??? Take a walk.. They wouldn’t leave us alone, I called the cops on them for harassment:) then they brought their own cops, it was a freaking mess but funny, cuz they couldn’t do anything.. We reasoned with the cops and they didn’t do anything but leave and the guys were left in bewilderment ..”

While street turf wars may seem like an antiquated form of competition, it’s a reality for business owners who make their living on wheels. And the world of street vendors represents a marked clash between old school and new school ways of doing business.

Street vendors have spent years staking out their territory on city
blocks. And while Twitter may make it easier to get in touch with
customers, it doesn’t change the difficulties of finding a place to
park, or help businesses deal with their competition.

The creation of Twitter has been a boon to foodies looking to start a business with low overhead. John Bowler, a vending cart owner in Los Angeles, says that he shredded his startup costs by opening a cart instead of a full fledged restaurant, spending about $40,000 to get started, compared to the $200,000 it would cost to start a restaurant.

And by simply sending out a tweet about their location, vendors can keep foot traffic headed their way no matter where they travel. Starting with the Kogi Korean taco truck in Los Angeles, urban areas have been inundated with trucks that tweet. And the list of street vendors using Twitter just keeps getting longer.

But as the economy has continued to dwindle, bargain food sales haven’t stayed so lucrative. In Los Angeles, for instance, many laid off employees have turned to street vending to earn cash. But as more vendors have entered seemingly recession proof markets like ice cream sales, ice cream truck sales have actually declined 25% in the city.

Flooding the vending market could soon be a bigger problem. James Rojas, founder of the Latino Urban Forum in LA tells the LATimes:

“Traditionally, taco trucks were very working class—janitors,
secretaries, people on public transit—but now they’ve been adopted by
the middle class as a legitimate way to buy and sell food. I think
people under 30 want to bike and walk and take transit. These aren’t
Latinos that have to take transit. These are privileged, middle-class
kids. So taco trucks are targeting this group.”

The recent proliferation of mobile gourmet options has been great for urban residents. But it may not be such an awesome business model. Even the Kogi truck, with all of the major media coverage it has received, is constantly fending off imitators (the most recent? Baja Fresh).

But the vending wars point to a good lesson: If you’ve heard of an innovative way to use social media to boost sales, you’re probably not the only one. And a good social media strategy isn’t going to help businesses sale by real world problems that have plagued new companies for years.

From Midtown Lunch:

“While Twitter can be a monster marketing tool that can create instant
crowds (and profits) it’s not usually the case.  Like any business you
have to pay your dues, and build up your customer base over time.  It’s
not going to be easy at the beginning, but the key (as it has always
been with street vending) is consistency.  Don’t be lured in by the
freedoms that you think twitter affords you.”

Image: DeciderNY

Social Media and PR News by EConsultancy

Southern Comfort goes all in on web advertising

In December, Google refined its policies on liquor keywords in AdWords
(just in time for the holidays) to allow ads for hard liquor to target
the U.S. Now brands like Southern Comfort can take better advantage
of search advertising.

Hard liquor ads in search can still only be used for branding purposes, like recipes and seasonal drink ideas. Beer advertisers (who were allowed on
AdWords earlier last fall) can promote a purchase with sales
promotions.

But there are also more options for display and branding, and compared to television, where restrictive guidelines prevent liquor ads from appearing on most network programming and those that do get through are often relogated to late night programming, online offers promising options.

Lena DerOhannessian, SoCo’s U.S. marketing director, tells AdAge about her company’s problem with traditional TV buys:

“You’re usually in the same program, if not the same pod, with another
spirits advertiser. That was just a game we didn’t want to
keep playing.”

Rather than dealing with that, SoCo has started partnering with digital properties where
it is the sole alcohol sponsor. The company is working with Facebook, Spin, Playboy, Thrillist, NBC and Pitchfork on branding, sponsorships and original series that promote different aspects of its product. And online, it has relationships with network programs
like 30 Rock” and “The Office” that spirits ads wouldn’t be allowed near on television.

But ad spend online is also saving them money.

From AdAge:

“Ms. DerOhannessian said savings from the switch to a 100% digital media
buy will allow the brand to bolster its presence in bars and at retail,
as well as through events. It will also give it a significant footprint
online, where a $10 million budget stretches very far.”

Last year, the company spent $6 million of its $8 million ad budget on cable television and another $1.5 million on magazines. But after a year of slow sales, Southern Comfort is replacing its traditional media buys entierely with online purchases.

Says Ms. DerOhannessian: “As we’ve focused more on 21 to 29, TV becomes less and less effective
at reaching that audience. It was getting harder and harder
to hit our target without so much waste.”

Social Media and PR News by EConsultancy

Tomorrow’s news companies: small, lean and venture capitalist

The above graphic comes a post at Silicon Alley Insider, which they took from business-networking site Meet The Boss. I’m a big fan of data visualisation because in most cases it illustrates a story better than some actual articles do.

Why this graphic is important is it shows how far Amazon has come since 1998. It gobbles up companies that its executives believe will give it a competitive advantage. That’s all they care about, customer service aside, so it makes sense that they’re acutely aware of developments in their spheres of influence.

My question: Why can’t news organisations do the same? They’re a business just like Amazon is a business. Each actively seeks to gain a competitive upper-hand. As the news industry slowly drifts into the web as a primary outlet, it would make sense that they seek out the companies that could get them to where they need to be.

Think about it this way: What if The Daily Telegraph had bought TwitJobs? It would have given the paper a real presence in the growing arena of Twitter job ads and would have been a new revenue stream. How about GumTree? Or MoveFlat? There exist many opportunities to interweave news content alongside products like this, which would increase uniques and page views. Not only that, the income from fees placing ads and from third-party advertisers would be considerable.

Finding where these companies are is as easy as walking out the door and to one of the many networking events that London’s entrepreneurs have on a weekly and monthly basis. Last week I went to an event called “DrinkTank” in London hosted by Huddle.net, an online platform for online workspaces

. The bar was bustling with local talent, each developing a unique product for the web.

Ignoring the availability of so much talent is a huge mistake. Web-focused journalism requires new thinking. The first to dip their toe into the bustling entrepreneur scene will have an advantage over their competitors. 

Social Media and PR News by EConsultancy

Five reasons why consumers will reject news paywalls

This list has little to do with the economics of the situation. Rather, I’m employing a method I made up on Twitter a few days ago when discussing with friends why Jon Stewart is seen as ‘America’s most trusted newsman’.

I call it the ‘Jon-Stewart-is-America’s-most-trusted-newsman-because-he-calls-people-on-their-bullshit’ method.

It boils down to Jon Stewart’s appearance as someone who speaks for the people who watch his program, not the important people he interviews and his peers. I’m going to try to look at this from the perspective of the consumer who would end up paying for access to the content.

Alright, here goes …

5. Bottom line: Paywalls mean people have to pay, and most will not

The economic theory is that in a system like this, the subscribers subsidise the free users. The only problem with that is it has been tried and it failed. The New York Times used Times Select and shut it down in 2007 because the $10m a year in revenue it was generating just was not enough. 

4. Charging for something that was free is a losing idea

This only works when you’ve offering a free trial, often used by software companies. That’s not the case with news. Niche and business titles aside, everything has been free for many, many years. Would you pay for something one day after getting it free for years and years? I wouldn’t unless it was bigger and better than the free version.

3. People won’t pay for something that was free unless it becomes much, much more valuable to them

Say you do decide to build a paywall around your content. It’s the same content that was free, only now it has to be paid for. Consumers will not pay for something that was free unless the value of the commodity, news in this case, increases along with its price. If that doesn’t happen, people will not buy in.

2. You’re forcing people to make a choice – and news organisations may not like what consumers decide

You may have heard that Chris Anderson, US editor of WIRED and author of ‘The Long Tail’, has a new book out called ‘Free’. In it he talks about the history and application of ‘free’ in the marketplace. He makes a very interesting point about what happens when suddenly consumers are confronted with having to pay for something that previously was free:

It’s as if our brains were wired to raise a flag every time we’re confronted with a price. This is the ‘is it worth it?’ flag. If you charge a price, any price, we are forced to ask ourselves if we really want to open our wallets. But if the price is zero, that flag never goes up and the decision just got a lot easier.

1. The timing could not be worse

This reason is more situational, however it’s very important. You hear lots of people spouting off about how the recession is coming to a close, and more often than not they’re completely and totally wrong.

But once the recession is really, truly over, it’s not as though we’re all going to be swimming in money. When that time comes, if people are paying for news, they will stop paying for something else. That’s just how it works. Right now paying for news is an additional expense in the eyes of many. This is not the time for additional expenses. 

Social Media and PR News by EConsultancy

Social media: myth versus reality

Myth: ROI can’t be measured.

Reality: This is perhaps the biggest myth and it’s absolute hogwash. Social media is measurable. For online businesses, tracking traffic and conversions from popular social networking destinations is no different than tracking traffic and conversions from, say, AdWords. For offline businesses, there’s no good reason that the same methodologies that are frequently applied to measure the impact of ‘branding‘ campaigns in other mediums can’t be applied to social media. Given that there are companies measuring the impact social media has on their businesses, I feel comfortable stating that most of the people who continue to repeat that social media can’t be measured are either lazy or have something to hide.

Myth: Social media is still immature.

Reality: Obviously there is still some disagreement about the formal definition of ‘social media‘ but let’s make this simple: online message board communities were popular in the late 90s, blogs have been on the scene since the turn of the millennium (you might recall that Blogger launched in 2000) and Friendster put today’s style of social networking on the map back in 2003. So to call social media immature is a bit disingenuous. If you need further convincing, consider that your grandmother may be on Facebook.

Myth: Social media is about conversations.

Reality: It may sound cynical, but oftentimes social media degrades into a less formal exercise in corporate shilling; an extreme extension of the ‘tell the customer whatever he wants to hear‘ mentality. One example is instructive for brands: when former Frontier Airlines customer Andrew Hyde complained about the airline’s standby policy, Frontier’s willingness to hold a “conversation” with him didn’t matter because he wasn’t being told what he wanted to hear. I personally admired that but from a social media standpoint, you can be sure that Frontier would have won a lot more praise from the social media community if it had apologized when it felt no apology was due, committed to using Twitter @JetBlue-style and paid lip service to Hyde. And I do mean paid.

Myth: For brands, authenticity is a must.

Reality: For brands, money is a must. Brands that are willing to open their wallets can easily influence consumer perception of them in the realm of social media. There are plenty of case studies demonstrating that social media denizens are easily bought off. From Twitter users who will tweet just about anything for a chance at a prize to mommy bloggers gladly write product reviews in exchange for free product, there’s no doubt: the easiest way to play is to pay.

Myth: Social media is killing off [insert industry name here].

Reality: Social media has definitely made an impact on the media landscape. But blogs aren’t killing newspapers (newspapers are doing a fine job of killing themselves thank you very much), television is far from dying, etc. etc. etc. The smartest players are taking social media for what it is: a new channel. Nothing more, nothing less. This isn’t an either-or proposition: when used strategically, social media can augment multi-channel initiatives.

Myth: There are no social media experts.

Reality: Debating whether anyone deserves to be considered a social media ‘expert’ has become a waste of time; you could probably argue that in most industries today, things move so fast that nobody can truly lock in ‘expert‘ status. The reality is that there are savvy individuals who have used social media to demonstrably benefit their businesses and the businesses of their employers. While their experiences and track records don’t guarantee future results, they’ve earned more credibility than, say, someone who calls himself an ‘expert‘ but doesn’t have any real-world case studies to back up the title. So the real question is not “Are you an expert?“; it’s “Have you walked the walk?“

Myth: Social media is ‘cheap‘.

Reality: So is television advertising, print advertising, direct mail, radio advertising, etc. With one catch: it’s all relative. When it comes to social media, the true measure of ‘cheap‘ isn’t determined by how much it costs you to register on Twitter and tweet, for instance. The true measure of ‘cheap‘ is how your investments (including of time and labor) relate to what you get in return. For some companies, social media may be extremely cheap. For others, it may be far too expensive.

Myth: It’s all about influence.

Reality: Are there influential individuals who can collectively make or break your business? The good news: in some cases it appears that the answer may be ‘yes‘. The bad news: you probably have no way of knowing who they are. The whole concept of ‘influence‘ has been reduced into an oversimplistic mechanical view of the social media world. The reality is that the serious ‘science‘ of influence is far more nuanced and complex than many have tried to dumb it down to be and for companies, this means that looking for the right haystack is probably a better strategy than finding the needles within it.

Myth: Social media is the future.

Reality: Social media is the present. The future is unknown. If your company treats adoption of social media today as some form of future-proofing, chances are when the next big thing comes along, you’ll look a lot like those companies who are still trying to figure out what the big deal about the internet is.

Myth: Social media is a passing fad.

Reality: There’s a lot of noise but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t signal. Remember: a lot of businesses fail when they attempt certain things. In the world of SEO, for instance, I’d venture a guess that more than 50% of the companies that have implemented some sort of SEO initiative have failed. Does that mean that SEO is a passing fad? Of course not.

Social Media and PR News by EConsultancy

Antidirect Marketing (Not B2C, it’s C2B) or Marketing 2.0 – Making Customers Come to Business

Question: What is the most effective way to approach potential prospects? Through cold-calls? referrals? or others?

by Leo Ky

Dear Leo,

The selection of an approach depends on the market you are targeting and your strategy to get to the target market.

We are an outsourcing company with an offshore design studio in the Indian Subcontinent. Our clients are Commercial Photography Agency, Professional Photographers, Graphics Design firms, Freelance Graphic Designers, Corporate Identity Design companies, Catalog & Brochure Design Studios, Prepress Companies, Desktop Publishing Firms, and Web Design & Development service providers. We work globally and the whole world is our customer.

Now, we can’t go on making cold calls to potential clients or assign referrals in different areas of the world. We have already tried that and had a pretty bad experience. Moreover, that would incur huge operation cost as well as reputation cost. Again, cold calls are now considered voice spamming. Email spamming has also lost its respect as an instrument of direct marketing over the internet. Often direct marketing is a pain for consumers or customers.

That’s why we prefer Non-traditional Indirect Marketing, which is gaining popularity. Which I would like to call Anti-direct Marketing or C2B Marketing. While Direct Marketing is concerned about going the the potential customers and making sales (B2C), Indirect Marketing is concerned about making customers come to the business (C2B).

The strategy for getting the Customers come to your business (C2B) can be different for different companies. Success factor, risk, and cost is also determinant for adopting appropriate strategy. Some of the strategies are broken into categories below:

Content Marketing

• Corporate Content (Brochure, Catlog, etc.) Mass Marketing to target groups
• Press Release Marketing
• Blog Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Search Engine Advertising (SEA) or Pay Per Click (PPC)

Database Marketing

• RSS, Atom, XML feed Marketing
• Joining Trade & Professional Associations or Establishing one
• Getting yourself listed in the major Directories, Yellow Pages, White Pages
• Providing corporate information to all probable access points or media by your target customers

Social Marketing

• Online Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Involving in social activities that involves high concentration of your target market
• Exchanging strategic benefits with other businesses for free trials to the potential clients (e.g. A Motorbike co. can give free bike ride in the transition time to those who come to fix their car or bike in a Auto Repair Shop. A after-bath hair lotion, can be given in small sachet for free with any big brand shampoo)

This list is only the tip of an ice-berg. However, marketing research is essential to understand which type of Non-traditional Indirect Marketing you would choose. You can use paid surveys or mystery buying to understand the behavior of your customers.

Philanthropists are the greatest marketers, and vice versa

People Search in LinkedIn – Hunting for Professionals with Specific Similarities

I have been in a hunt for SEO & SEM experts throughout the world. My objective was to connect with them through LinkedIn, to share expertise, and to discuss critical SEO & SEM issues. By the time I accelerated my hunting spree, I was banned by LinkedIn to add people by various relationships. That’s why I only could add them in my network with the “Other” relationship through mentioning their email addresses. That was a challenge, but it allowed me to explore many techniques for email hunting through the Search Engines. I have used many people or professionals hunting technique, which I would like to categorize into 2 categories, such as: Professionals/People Mining in LinkedIn and Email Mining for People or Professionals through Search Engines.

Professionals/People Mining in LinkedIn

If you want to find specific types of professionals, then the best way is the people search in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a platform of over 15 Million users. All who are professionals and join LinkedIn to explore the professional relationship with others. Since career is also 1/3^rd of your life (8 hours per day), this also carries a greater importance in people. So, people like me use Facebook to get connected with friends and family that are 1/3^rd of my Personal Life and use LinkedIn for the next 1/3^rd. Well, for the rest 1/3^rd, we all live in the Dream Life However, to search people or professionals in LinkedIn, you can also use Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Live, etc.

People Search in LinkedIn

LinkedIn People Search provides you the facility to search for similar professionals. Please note that in LinkedIn you can also search with double enclosed double quotes (“”) as well as Search Operators like: AND/OR, which can help you in narrow and strategic searching. I would encourage you to use it liberally.

However, for that you have to understand the keywords the Search Engine Marketers will be using to mention in their profile. There are various ranges of keywords like: Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, SEM, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Web Promotion, Pay Per Click, PPC, Search Engine Advertising, Online Advertising, Online Promotion, Social Media Optimization, SMO, Social Media Marketing, SMM, etc. To search for Search Engine Marketers, I personally prefer these keywords within braces: [SEO SEM] [“Search Engine” Optimization OR Marketing] [Internet Marketing] [Online Promotion] and [Online Marketing].

You can also search for specific industry with technical terms. e.g. If you search in the Information Technology & Services Industry, then using generic keyword like “Marketing” can logically lead you to Search or Internet Marketing professionals. Again, for the Marketing Industry, if you use the “Internet” or “Search Engine” that will also lead you to the same. However, you should manually evaluate each and every professional.

LinkedIn People Search in Google

LinkedIn only allows you to search and view people that are:

1^st Level: Connected with you,

2^nd Level: Connected with your connections,

3^rd Level: Connections that are connected with your 2^nd Level Connections.

However, there may exist more people than your network’s people search suggests. To overcome this barrier, you can use Google to search for the other people in LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually allows public profiles to be searched through the internet. You can set your LinkedIn Public Profile URL in this format “http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname”. These public profiles are searchable through the internet. Moreover, you can have access to the full profile by accessing the Public Profile. Again those who don’t change their Public Profile URL, LinkedIn use predefined Public Profile URL like “http://www.linkedin.com/pub/#/###/X##” (# = Digits, X = Letters).

So, to search for Search Marketing professionals, I have used the keyword:

[“Search Engine” OR Internet Marketing OR Optimization OR SEO OR SEM site: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ OR site:http://www.linkedin.com/in/]. This term will search within http://www.linkedin.com/in/ OR http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ sites (all the LinkedIn Public Profiles) looking for pages that contain “Search Engine”/Internet AND Marketing /Optimization/SEO/SEM. You have to individually visit each link that is generated through Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) and find ways how to add them.

Email Mining for People/Professionals

After you get the required or target people/professionals and if you are one of the unfortunate like me, the only way to get connected is through the email addresses of your desired connection. I have been using some of the below techniques to find out email addresses of various untraceable people:

Searching Name with Company Domain

Since the successful Search Engine Marketers promote their corporate identity, it helps to find them through their Corporate Domain Name. e.g. Mr. Jim Carrey obviously will have a company email address like jim.carrey@holliwud.com or jcarrey@holliwud.com. These two are the common forms of Corporate Email Addresses. i.e.

- FirstName.LastName@CompanyDomain.com

- FirstNameInitialLastName@CompanyDomain.com

So, the best way to Google Search for it is though this type of keyword: [“Jim Carrey” CompanyDomain] or [jcarrey CompanyDomain] or [“Jim Carrey” OR jcarrey CompanyDomain.com]

If Mr. Carrey is the CEO or any influential person in the company, then you will obviously find the reference to his/her email address mentioned in any webpage. Or at least get some reference on where to find it. Don’t give up your hope if you can’t find the email address in one try. Please also go on looking into the First 20, 30, or 40 results. I often found the email address directly mentioned in the Google Results in the first 40 results. Therefore, I really didn’t have to open any link in the Google Result Pages.

Searching Name with Popular Email Service Providers (Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.)

According to a recent statistics, the average age of LinkedIn users is more than Facebook. LinkedIn also has the major earning population. So, my guess is, they are the one of the first to get the email addresses like: FirstName.LastName@gmail.com, FirstName.LastName@yahoo.com, FirstNameInitialLastName@aol.com, FirstNameInitialLastName@hotmail.com. So, it always helps to use your guess power to make up the email address of the your target professional and then search for it in Google to verify the existence. Again, you may find them in other Social Media sites with a specific user id. e.g. Jim Carrey can use i_am_jim ID for his MySpace ID, chances are, he may also be using i_am_jim@yahoo.com or i_am_jim@hotmail.com.

Another fact is, people usually customize their LinkedIn URL by their Email ID when they can’t find their name available for custom Public Profile URL. I am talking about the Public Profile URL in LinkedIn that looks like this: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcutts13. It is obvious that, if any other Matt Cutts (Not the Google Guy) may find the URL available. So, he wil try to think of alternative and choose the best URL name that represent him/her. The probability of using the Email ID as the name for the custom URL is more than 50% (True/False Situation). Therefore, when you see such custom URL, you can guess that the person may be using mattcutts13@yahoo.com, mattcutts13@hotmail.com, mattcutts13@gmail.com or mattcutts13@aol.com.

After doing your guesswork, Google the email address to see if the address exists anywhere. You can try by searching [mattcutts13@yahoo.com OR mattcutts13@hotmail.com OR mattcutts13@gmail.com OR mattcutts13@aol.com]. So, if any one of the email exists, then you’ve got your man.

Searching Name and Mailto Tags

Using mailto: as keyword for searching email addresses in Google, is one of the oldest techniques to find email addresses of related sites. I remember, before 2002, when you wanted to find email addresses of Diamond Earrings sites, then the best way was to search them trough this keyword: [Diamond Earrings mailto:]. This keyword search would allow you to have a lot of results from the related sites and also would show their email addresses. This was once the golden era of the Email Marketers. But, steadily when these marketers lost their reputation and became spammers, many people created some restrictions to disallow the spammers to collect their email addresses. So, now-a-days it is quite hard to find email addresses this way. But, there are always some pages that are not careful about mentioning email addresses. So the best ways to find these pages is through this keyword search in Google: [“FirstName LasteName” mailto:]. When any of the above doesn’t work, I try this search as the last weapon.

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

7 Ls of LinkedIn as Social Marketing Media – Life, Livelihood, Links, Liaison, Lobbying, Learning, & Leveraging Reputation

Social Media Marketing (SMM) has created a buzz in the Internet Marketing industry. Most of the Internet Marketing specialists are referring marketing optimization for Web 2.0 as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 2.0. Therefore, I was also enthusiastic about learning the process. When I started SMM, I found that networking can bring good and free results. And have been involved with LinkedIn for some time to bring benefit for businesses, not for my career.

LinkedIn for most of the time, is misinterpreted as media for job & head hunting. But, with recent interactive facilities and professional online profile, you can do a lot more than just searching for jobs. Therefore, I have listed some of the utilities you can get from LinkedIn:

1. LIFE & LIVE Profile

LinkedIn profile gives you an existence in the web for your name. LinkedIn public profile which starts with “http://www.linkedin.com/pub/#/###/X##” (# = Digits, X = Letters) or custom link like http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname are extremely search engine friendly. Anyone who wishes to use the search engine to search for you can get information about your through your LinkedIn profile. Moreover, your LinkedIn profile has greater marketability in search engines which is often more frequently visited than your new site. So, your profile can be used as your information media for the world. Those who are willing to create a online professional profile and don’t want to go into the hassle of promoting the profile for your name, then LinkedIn is the best solution.

2. LIVELIHOOD for Your Career or Business

Career would’ve been the right word for this. But, if you are an entrepreneur, then your career would be your business. In both cases, they are your “Livelihood”. LinkedIn provides great support for your career and business by increasing reputation though recommendations and experience badge. Moreover, your connection also works as your verification media for clients and employers that reduce risk for them. Often your reputation is more valuable than your marketability, as it can help you in marketing by itself.

3. LINKS with Peers, Like-minded or Target Professionals

LinkedIn is about building professional relationship with communities that you call as peers (friends and colleagues), who can help you in your personal and professional life as well. You can also get connected with people of similar profession to yours to share expertise and knowledge. That way you can also stay well informed about the industry trends and news. As a businessman, you can also use LinkedIn to connect with clients as well as suppliers and make your experience better by personally keeping them in touch.

4. LIAISONS at Personal Level with Other Companies

Sending unsolicited emails for the purpose of marketing has become tough these days. In my previous company we needed to contact a large company for the services we provided. Several mails to their corporate account proved to be useless. Then we started connecting individually with the employees of the corporation. And then one by one, we approached at personal level to find out the right person that can get our job done by mutually helping each other in the network. Finally, we were awarded with a small trial order. Maintaining liaison with your first time clients should be done this way, especially for highly expected clients.

5. LOBBYING & LURING People

If you are trying to create a group to support what you are trying to achieve or if you are trying to create a community by luring them to provide value for your goal, then Social Networking in LinkedIn can provide you greater result than any other platform. However, you should also be a good social person in online media as well. As a good social person in the real world, you can also mimic the behavior to provide support of others in the online media.

6. LEARNING through Professionals

“LinkedIn Answers” is one of my favorite utility in LinkedIn. Once you air a question, you can spread the question to your network and your network also forward the question to the people they think may have some answer. You end up getting answers from professionals related to the asked question. People enthusiastically answer your question, as the best answer earns a person experience badge, which dramatically increases reputation. Moreover, the quality of answer is very very good. If you haven’t tried it, then you are really missing a great thing. For some questions, I have found very high quality answers that were not available in any forum or website. I was able to use LinkedIn as a media to gather information to take critical managerial decisions and resolve problems through the experience of others, who have faced similar problems and successfully came out of it. So, you are not doing the same error as others.

7. LEVERAGE TRUST and Reliability

If you are connected with your clients and gave your network the impression that you are extremely social, you have network that owes some portion of the reliability to you. You can establish yourself as one of the thought or solution leader by providing answers to the questions or solutions to the problems your network faces through your professionalism. This creates a personal bondage with your network and they rely on you when they think about purchasing the product or service you deal with. If you are dealing with services, then the best way to market yourself is by gaining reputation, trust, and reliability for the network. And LinkedIn can be used for that. This reputation gain can turn your network into clients or referrers/marketers for your business. Again, why not have your personal network that is full of your clients?

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing – The Near & Far Future of Online Marketing

I entered the 3rd Annual SEM Scholarship Contest of

Marketing Pilgrim
for SEM Scholarship. For that, I’ve submitted an article related to
internet marketing that titles:

13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing.

Why I Chose This Topic?

In my university life, I was famous for palmistry. It made me popular among
people that my friend circles even didn’t see. The popularity spread even beyond
the University boundary. I don’t practice palmistry anymore. However, I always
found that people always like to get these type of future shocks. Moreover,
Science Fiction are hotcake now. So, I thought that this type of article would
generate more enthusiastic readers.

Another reason for choosing “Internet Marketing” in the title is because, it was more popular than other keywords like: Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Pay Per Click. Please the Google Trends results of these keywords together:

Why 13 Prophecies, not 7 Seven Prophecies?

7 was never my lucky number. Ironically, 13 was always my lucky number. I
don’t strongly believe in numerology. But , most of the good news I get has
resemblance with the number thirteen. Again the the number 13 is more
controversial than any other number. And controversial titles attract more
attention,

What is in the Article?

The SEM Contest is all about bringing visitors for the article. Therefore, I
would request you to read my article

13 Prophecies of Internet Marketing in Marketing Pilgrim site. However,
here is a list of the Prophecies I mentioned in the article:

Prophecy #1: Onsite Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be History

Prophecy #2: Searching will become more User-friendly

Prophecy #3: More Personalized & Localized Results will Influence SEM

Prophecy #4: Natural Language Reputation Algorithm will be a Great
Factor

Prophecy #5: Copying Themes will be punished by Near Duplicate
Content Filter

Prophecy #6: TrustRank will be Stronger than PageRank

Prophecy #7: Online Social Media will kill Traffic from Search
Engines

Prophecy #8: Handheld Devices will Rule Future Traffic

Prophecy #9: Email will be the Least Used for Personal Communication

Prophecy #10: Personal Power to Influence Purchase will Increase

Prophecy #11: Web-based Consumer Analytics will be Major Internet
Marketing Process

Prophecy #12: Web Cluster and Widgets will mean Businesses for Small
Companies

Prophecy #13: Future Internet Marketers will be Personal Helper

Please find detailed description of the topics mentioned above in

this article. I hope you will find the topic interesting. And if you find
the article worth forwarding to your friends, please please please feel
free to do so And please let me know, I might return the favor.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank people who had helped me providing some idea about the
future of internet marketing. Here is their chronological order list:

Lorrie Houchin Thomas Web Marketing Speaker, Educator and Strategist

James Burchill Corporate Internet Marketing & Strategic Content Advisor

Mark Raffan Account Executive at Neverblue Media Inc.

Emma Haller Owner, Se Vende Casa

Keith Ricker Executive Account Manager, Online Division at Career Builder

WSI Corporate Own the World’s #1 Rated Internet and Technology Franchise

Kevin Milden President, New Leaders

Chris Hornak SEO Professional

Ana Bota Slavic Internet Promotion Consultant at Kreativni Poduhvati d.o.o.

Marc Rapp Creative/New Business Development at Renaissance Creative

Brad Dolbel Director of Australian Operations for 1080 Promotions Pty Ltd (Mobile Marketing & Entertainment)

Cristine Clarke, Ed. D. Instructor Distance Learning at NC School Science and Mathematics

Meena Bopaiah Web Designer, SEO, Airlines/Aviation Professional

Chase Rogers Owner, Chase New Media

Nick Braak Analyst, Hired Gun/Consultant, Commentator

Gareth Hatch Director of Technology at Dexter Magnetic Technologies Inc.

George Bounacos Mixing Business and Technology Success. Contact: georgebounacos@boxbe.com

Adriano Muzzi Marketing & Communications at BT Italy

Peter Kent – SEO/PPC/Ecommerce Consultant Digital Publishing/E-Commerce/E-Business/Internet/SEO/PPC Consultant

Keith Treco Digital Marketing Professional

Michele Domaneschi Principal Solution Architect at Telecom New Zealand

James Wilkinson Creative Director at Electronlibre

Wade Holloway Online Marketing Consultant at LiftSEO.com

Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

Future Google Search Page or Search Engine Result Page (SERP) – A Vision

Background: I have aired a question in LinkedIn to seek peoples’ vision of the future of the Search Engine Result Page (SERP) or Google Search Page. I got very interesting answers and I am thankful to all the people that replied.

In my prophecy article, I have mentioned that internet search will become more user-friendly and visual (as the 2nd of 13 prophecies). This post puts more light on this prophecy.

As the speed of internet increases, as the number of pages in the websphere increases, and as the participation of the people with web increase over time, Search Engines like Google would be able to and have to provide more features and user experience to stay in top of the competition. Here are some of my vision for future Search Engine Result Page (SERP):

Visual Results

We will see more visual results in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Search results will become more visible than the current text-based results we see today. So, you can have a peek on the results before you plan to click and open it. I hope you have seen quick preview pop-in by Snapshot for external link in WordPress that gives you the preview before opening it. Interactive function like mouse-over preview and expansion will increase visitor experience.

Supplemented Results as “More results from this site”

Some times you see Google results that are from the same site and supplemented or indented inward. This option eats up a position for a page. i.e. a site stays in 2 position in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). This creates a problem for you see other pages. I believe that Google come with resolution for this problem and make other pages from the site mentioning the searched keyword would be easily viewed.

Visibility of the Similar Pages

Currently, the similar page result is provided as link at bottom of the result. However, as things are going to be visible, we would be able to preview similar pages as well. That way, you can have similar pages all together. Pages with duplicate contents can also fall under this option. When you mouse-over the “View Similar Pages” button, you would be able to see more results within the results and search faster than ever. This will show pages that follow similar themes, duplicate contents, similar conversions, etc.

Site Conversation

Almost every page has a link to another page. Many people talk about, praise, and criticize the site in another page, site, forum, social media, etc. A mouse-over sensitive button saying “View Pages Talking About This Site” will help you to view these sites as well. Currently, for buying we do background search for a company or a product to choose the best one. But, for that we make more than one search. But, this option will meet all your search needs in one search. This will also provide insights to conversations with nofollow tags on other pages.

More Search Result

Due to the growth of the web, instead of the default top 10 results, SERPs can reflect this growth with default top 15-20 results. Moreover, as the similar and linked pages can be viewed, you would have the flexibility to view more than 200 results in same place.

Video Advertisement – AdScreen

The advertisements will be replaced by videos. Moreover, the era of video search has started and you now can find videos saying the keyword in Youtube. So, the sponsored videos can get broad matching for the search keywords. Advertisement can come as autoplay videos (obviously with a Pause button) from the highest bidder of the keyword. Like AdWords, this will be called AdScreen.

This is my vision of the future Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

More future shock:

See the variety of visual results in Ask.com for Angelina Jolie (Suggested by: Harald Anderson)

See the use of visual search in SearchMe Beta (Suggested by: Allan Svelmøe Hansen)

A new search engine with interactive fucntion, FleeQ (Suggested by: Jonathan W. Logan)

This site shows up when you search Google Visual Search: OnlineiLink.com

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Philanthropists are the greatest marketers

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