Ami's Space

Hits, Clicks, Visits, Unique Visits, Pageviews, or What? Understanding the Jargon of Online Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:42:00 +0000

Working in the online ad business and dealing with various clients and web publisher partners for some time now, I think I explain these jargon to someone somewhere, at least three times every week. Every week I meet people from various online publications in Sri Lanka, canvassing for advertising packages on their websites. On the other end, I sit with various clients who then evaluate the value bundle in these packages, and making the decisions whether to buy it or not.

I noticed a problem, which happens repeatedly in most of these discussions. Increasingly, people use “hit rate” as a matrix to justify why someone should place an advertisement on their website. “Our website attracts more than 1 million hits a week”, “We recorded 40 million hits last months”, “Hit rate to our website is increasing significantly”. These are some of the words, I regularly hear from the people I meet.

Most advertisers (clients) don’t fully understand this jargon, so they blindly believe that, a website with a higher ‘hit rate’ is a good place to place their advertisements. Publishers (website owner) on the other hand, are also not fully aware of the difference between “hits” and “visits” or they are trying to exploit the ignorance of the client to exaggerate the popularity of their websites.

The problem as I can see is the lack of proper training among the people who work in the local ad industry. A web publisher company must at least give some basic training about “how the web works?” to their marketing executives, before they send them out to grab business.
Without cursing the darkness, let’s try to find at least one switch to on a CFL bulb!

If you are a marketing person at any of the Sri Lankan web publications, I hope this will help you to broaden your knowledge. More importantly, if you are a brand manager or a marketing communications manager at a Sri Lankan company, I sincerely hope this blog post will help you, to evaluate those advertising proposals much better!

If you are someone from an ad agency, who is clueless about what the hell is the other two guys on either side of you, are talking; I hope this will help you to strengthen your ‘word armory’ before the next meeting!

How The Web Works?

When you type the unique resource location (URL) www.amisampath.com on your web browser (FireFox, Internet Explorer, Chrome etc), your browser starts communicating with a “web server” (think of a large computer located in some foreign country). In this dialogue, the web browser will ask the web server, to “serve” the “unique resources” which is required to display this website on your computer screen. These unique resources include, images, java scripts, HTML files and various other software ‘objects’ which will help your browser to construct this website on your computer, the way it is now displayed.
Now that you’ve learned how the web works, let’s move on to each jargon I mentioned in the title of this blog post.

Hits
Let’s start with the most commonly used jargon in online advertising world (in Sri Lanka). The “hit rate”. Remember I told you, when a ‘web browser’ talks to a ‘web server’, the web server start delivering ‘objects’ which are needed to be displaying a website on your computer? Now, each time the web browser “hits” the web server, it is recorded on the web server’s “log” as a “hit”. Technically speaking, each file sent to a browser by a web server is an individual hit. Now imagine if I have a website and, I have loaded its home page with 100 images. You have another website and there are 500 images on its home page. Let’s assume 10 people each will visit both the websites. How much “hits” I get, and how much “hits” will you get? Correct! 1000 hits for me and 5000 hits for you. So, if you receive two proposals from these two websites, is it correct to assume that the website with 5000 hits is better than the other one? No. Both websites attracted 10 visitors each. Having more objects on your home page, than other websites is your problem!

Pageviews
After your browser collects all the “objects” from the web server (including the HTML file for the web page), the browser will display the full web page on your computer. Once the full page is displayed on your browser, then that will count as “1 pageview”. Remember, there can be hundreds of “hits” to the server, before it generates one pageview.

Visits
A visit happens when someone or something pays a visit to your website. For example, if I load the website www.facebook.com on my browser, that will be counted as one visit to that website. A visitor can make multiple visits to a website during a given period, and have multiple pageviews in each of those visits.

Unique Visitors
I told you, a person could make multiple visits to a website during a given period. No matter how many visits I make to the website during a day, I will remain a unique visitor to that page. How do we know if a visitor is unique or not? Most common method is to track by the user’s IP + Device ID combination, but if you have placed an analytics code such as Google Analytics on your website, you will be able to “cookie track” the uniqueness of the visitors. Well, that may sound a little bit too advanced for the time being, so... errrrr... forget the cookies!

Clicks and Impressions

Apart from the words hits, visits, pageviews, and unique visits, there are two more words frequently being used in online advertising. Those words are “clicks” and “impressions”. What is a click? Use your mouse and click on this link and that is a click. (Got it?). Well, the word “click” always is used in reference to a “mouse click” on a web banner you place on a 3rd party website. For example, if you place an advertisement on this website and if someone “click” on that to reach your website, that is counted as a ”click” in your campaign reports (if your publisher is providing any). Then what is an impression? Simply take the literal meaning. An impression is, someone (potentially) seeing your advertisement. For example, if you place a banner ad on this web page, every time this page get loaded on some one's web browser, that is counted as an “impression” for your advertisement. Remember, you cannot expect a “click” without an “impression”. So, all the time the number of impressions you record for your campaign is higher than the number of clicks you receive. The clicks you received as a percentage of impressions, is known as the “Clickthrough Rate” (CTR). The beauty of online advertising is (compared to TV or Radio), you can know exactly how many people “reacted” to your campaign, by looking at your CTR. You can track exactly, how many times your advertisement was “delivered” to your target audience.

So, as an advertiser, what are the matrices you should pay most attention?

Ignore the “hits”. Online advertising professionals should never use this word! Hits, is a matrix which is important for webmasters, not for marketers. Webmasters need to monitor the ‘hit rate’ to manage the network resources and optimize the server response time. However, for online marketers, this is a meaningless number.

Next time if someone try to market you some advertising space on a website, by highlighting the “hit rate” as a factor, never hesitate to ‘hit’ the guy in his face. (Disclaimer: I am not responsible for the consequences).

As someone who is looking to place a banner advertisement on a website, the number you should pay close attention is “pageviews”. Page views give you an idea about, how many “ad impressions” the website could deliver for you. For example, if a website is having 1 million pageviews for their home page for a month, and if you place a banner ad on their home page, you will potentially get 1 million ad impressions.

I hope this helped you to clear a lot of misconceptions, myths, and grey areas in online advertising jargon. Still having problems, understanding the concept? No worries! Simply get in touch with me through one of these methods. I may be able to help you further.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath Please help improve the quality of this blog. Report any spelling or grammar mistake here

Safe and Responsible Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:53:00 +0000

Thank you Nazly Ahmed of Refresh Colombo and Learn TV for producing and uploading this video for Youtube. This was my presentation on the topic "Safe and Responsible Social Media" at Refresh Colombo last December.

Synopsis

Social Media gives everyone a voice to speak in public domain and it serves as a tool to network freely with people all around the world. But how far you should go when expressing yourself on Social Media? What would be the consequences of what you share on social networks? Content you share on social network, can possibly change your life or someone else's. Now it is the ideal time to take a look at the ways we can use Social Media safer, and in a more responsible manner.

Back to Blogging - Template Revamp and Other Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:59:00 +0000

Yes, I’m back on blogsphere once more after nearly a two months silence. This time, I’m back with some changes to the layouts of this site and added couple of additional features as well.

I’ve been writing on this blog for nearly about five years now, and what keeps me going is the nice feeling I get, when I look back at some of the posts I’ve written in the past. There are some posts on this blog which are still being found as useful pieces of resources. For example, the posts I did about cheapest Androids in Sri Lanka, how to create newsletters with Feedburner, what motivates people to participate in Social Media, how to conduct online surveys using Google Docs, are still receiving hundreds of visits every day and still remains as some of the most visited pages on this blog. I think, this is a great example for those bloggers who measure the success of a blog purely based on the number of comments they attract, and quit blogging simply because they don’t get enough comments on their posts! In average, I gather only 3 comments per post, but I receive over 800 daily visitors purely through Google, because I’ve created some content which helps them to solve some of their problems.

The layout change is simple! I’ve removed the left hand side side-bar and increased the width of main content area, so that it becomes much easier for you to read from left to right of your screen (No distractions once you reach back to left hand side of your screen for the next line!). I’ve reduced the height of the header, and removed the glossy background image which I used to put as my trademark PowerPoint slide back ground as well. Changed the header background color to a one which is very familiar to you on another website, and lined up all the widgets and AdSense spaces to the right hand side side-bar. That’s all about the layout change. (Any suggestions for improvements?)

Beside the layout changes, I’ve added few new sections to the blog. “Best Of” tab below the header, so that you can easily access some of the best past posts on this blogs, which I pick based on the number of visits and shares. “Connect” tab will help you to find some alternative ways of reaching out to me. And don’t forget to check out my ‘official disclaimer’. I thought this will be a necessary item to add, as more and more people are ‘discovering’ what blogs are, and are still failing to realize the difference between personal blogging and old school journalism.

Finally, I will definitely do my best to update this blog as often as I can. I do welcome your feedback and opinions, preferably as your own blog posts (linking here), or comments, or by sharing any of the posts on Twitter or Facebook.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath Please help improve the quality of this blog. Report any spelling or grammar mistake here

Google+ Pages Contest and Promotion Policies

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:39:00 +0000

Image Credit: Joyoftech.com

It is now the yesterday’s news that Google+ has launched and equivalent product for Facebook brand pages. Companies around the world are flocking around Google+ to create their brand profiles. Already I’ve seen Mobitel and Dialog has already created their Google+ profiles and in time to come we will see more local and international brands joining the race to convince us to add them to our circles.

But how are they supposed to convince us? It’s not much difficult to guess, an intuitive strategy would be to run a promotion on Google+ to drive more followers to a brand page. We’ve seen this happening on Facebook, and I’ve blogged several times about how badly some brands violate the guidelines set by Facebook for promotions. Could this be happening on Google+ pages as well?

Before you think of running a promotion for your page on Google+ to attract more followers, be informed that just as that there are policies for running a promotion on Facebook; Google+ has also laid down some ground rules for running contests and promotions on their platform. You can find their official Google_ Pages contest and promotions policies on this page.

In their policy statement, they start by saying “You may not run contests, sweepstakes, offers, coupons or other such promotions (“Promotion”) directly on your Google+ Page”. The keyword here is “directly”. If we are not allowed to run promotions ‘directly’ on Google+, it implies running a promotion “indirectly” won’t break any rules. Google actually clarifies this later on in their policy by saying “You may display a link on your Google+ Page to a separate site where your Promotion is hosted so long as you (and not Google) are solely responsible for your Promotion and for compliance with all applicable federal, state and local laws, rules and regulations in the jurisdiction(s) where your Promotion is offered or promoted”.

So, ideally what you can do is hosting a contest, sweepstake, offer, coupon or other such promotion elsewhere on the internet (on your Facebook page? May be?) and posting a link on your Google+ page. But the big question is how do you make this ‘exclusive’ for the people who add your brand to a circle? Since the ultimate aim should be to increase your followership, you cannot leave the promotion open for public to view.

One possible solution maybe to create a circle on your own, for the people who already added you back to a circle (Followers). Then, when you post the link to your promotion you can restrict the update to the members of this circle only. However , you cannot announce and exclusive deal for your Google+ followers and reveal what the deal is only after they add your brand to a circle (The equivalent functionality of “Like-gating” on Facebook). This will remain as a huge drawback on Google+ brand pages for a long time, if they do not introduce a mechanism for “reveal content” (You see one message before you add a brand to a circle, and the message get changed as soon as you add it to a circle).

All in all, I see Google+ pages promotion policies are done in a hurry (just two paragraphs!) and they must be working hard in the back-end to enhance the features of Google+ pages.

Image Credit: Joyoftech.com

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath Please help improve the quality of this blog. Report any spelling or grammar mistake here

How Reliable is SocialMention.com Sentiment Analysis?

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:18:00 +0000

The #AndroidForum #Fail and @SocialMention #Fail

I always love to test out these new Social Listening and monitoring tools coming up every day. Recently I did a ‘trial’ with Sprout Social, which was heavily advertising on Google Display network these days. It is a decent social media management tool particularly for Twitter, if you are managing more than one Twitter handle at a time. Another social monitoring tool that I love is SocialBakers. It virtually is “the” source for Facebook statistics and a very reliable source for Facebook demographics and penetrations statistics for local markets.

Another tool which I was always recommended in most of my workshops and training events was “Social Mention”. For about an year, I’ve been using this as a decent tool to measure social media sentiments of brands I work with.

However, a recent experience (a very recent… just a few minutes ago) with SocialMention.com prompted me to think twice before using Social Mention for serious social media decision making.

Throughout the day, I’ve been monitoring an event took place in Colombo today named the #androidforum. I was passively following the tweets coming up from the event, until I suddenly notice a pattern in the tweets.

A pattern? Yes, a vast majority of the tweets coming from the event was seriously talking negative about the event. Many Tweeps who attended this Android Forum in Colombo, concluded it as a #Fail. (In fact, some offered recovery sessions free of charge).

Sentiment towards Android Forum in Colombo was clearly negative and I thought of putting this into test on SocialMention.com. Because, I’ve noticed something peculiar about SocialMention.com's sentiment analysis. Every time I search for a brand name or a hash tag, the sentiment analysis always comes favorable for the brand. I have never experienced a situation where SocialMention.com concludes a ‘generally negative’ sentiment towards any keyword I evaluated with them. So, this Android Forum thing in Colombo was a great case study for me to test the reliability of SocialMention.com sentiment analysis. Because, as a matter of fact I’ve noticed that Android Forum was receiving extremely bad responses from the Tweeps who were attending it.

Searching for #AndroidForum on SocialMention surprisingly returned me a sentiment score of 4:1, which means for every 4 positive sentiments there are only 1 negative sentiment. I was so surprised, therefore decided to check by one tweet at a time.

I noticed, most of the negative sentiment tweets were recorded as “neutral” by SocialMention.com. But the funny thing is, SocialMention.com was reporting some obviously negative sentiments as ‘positive’. For example, a tweet by @Hajara_ read as “So I didn't waste my leave on a #fail #androidforum =]”. I don’t think it would be much difficult for any machine, to identify this as a ‘negative’ sentiment. This tweet carries obviously negative sentiments such as “I didn’t waste my leave” and a clear #fail hash tag. For any robot which analyze Tweets, this must be an easy job to recognize that #Fail is a negative sentiment in Twitter language.

A tweet by @Kasun32 read as “Its better if @EtisalatSL spent that money on a charity #AndroidForum #fail” but yet, SocialMention.com recognized it as positive.

So this leaves me obviously in two minds, before I recommend SocialMention.com to anybody in future.

Do you guys use similar social monitoring tools by any chance which can measure social sentiment much more accurately? Would love to know some alternatives.

Learning Social Media From කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya)

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:22:00 +0000

කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya) is the latest talking point on Facebook. I see at least 10 comics or other funny content shared by my Facebook friends, which links back to කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya) Facebook page.

All though I do not have a clue about the guys working behind this title, I must say that they are enjoying some decent amount of ‘Social Media Love’ from Facebook users in Sri Lanka. I believe the name originated from this particular episode of ‘Mobitel Fan Talk’, which was aired during Cricket World Cup 2011.

The page gives us few good social media marketing lessons. Facebook recently introduced a new KPI to measure level of engagement of a Facebook page. This new index measures how many “people are talking about” your Facebook page during past 7 days. Why this number is important? Because, people will talk about your Facebook page (your brand on Facebook) only if you deliver ‘talk worthy content’ on your page. This matrice will significantly improve, if people start sharing the content originally uploaded/posted on your Facebook page. කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya) is a prime example of how ‘compelling content’ can encourage engagement. As at the time of writing this post, කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya) is having only 14,000 odd “Likes” but 82,000 people are talking about them. A quick look at some the most popular Sri Lankan Facebook pages with over 50,000 ‘Likes’ are struggling to pass the 2,000 mark in the index for ‘people are talkin about’.

How do we read this index? කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya) having 82,000 ‘people talking about’ as against another page with a larger fan base having just 1,500 ‘people talking about’ essentially mean that Kajuwatte page is having more powerful content which ignites actions amongst people who are exposed to it. People will actively ‘Like’, ‘Comment’ and more importantly ‘Share’ which will ultimately end up being recording more ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’ from people who are not even ‘Liked’ (a fan of) කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya).

What is the social media lesson?
The lesson essentially is, as a brand you should always try to increase this figure. This will be a guiding indicator whether your fans are actively getting engaged with the content you share on your brand page. If you have over 50,000 fans but less than 1,000 people are talking about you, there got to be something wrong in the content you share or, you have not attracted the right audience for the type of content you share.

The Trap
However, depending on this matrix to measure your ‘level of engagement’ can sometimes be detrimental. This of course measures ‘engagement’ but it doesn’t give you a clue about the sentiments. If 10,000 people are talking about your brand enthusiastically in a negative tone, I’m sure you would rather love to make that number smaller, rather than trying to increase the ‘engagement’ on a negative direction.

Sharing Irrelevant Jokes & Funny Videos Won’t Work
I recently observed, some brands on Facebook have already figured out this matrix and trying to add “sharable content” on their brand pages. In extreme cases, brands are sharing totally irrelevant jokes and funny videos with the hope that ‘some one’ will share this. Although this might help the Facebook page’s admin to make his KPI’s look sexy for their bosses, in a brand’s perspective this isn’t doing any good. After all, if you are an Airline company, people “Liked” your Facebook page to know more about your flights, deals, and services; not to read “Udurawana Jokes” or “Blond Jokes” on your Facebook page.

In a final note I should say.. Leave all funny videos, comics and Udurawana Jokes to කජුවත්ත එක්සත් Cricket සමාජය (Kajuwatte Eksath Cricket Samajaya) and focus on adding ‘compelling and relavant’ content to your Facebook brand page, which might ignite a conversation among your true customers.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

Google+ Will Never Be Able To Kill Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:36:00 +0000

I wanted to have a second title for this blog post - An ‘Unidentified Gunman’ Will Eventually Kill Facebook - but I decided to stick to above. I will later tell you more about this ‘unidentified gunman’.

So Google finally decided to retire their ‘Twitter Killer’ Google Buzz, sending it the same direction as their previously launched ‘Email Killer’ Google Wave gone. While this gives us an indication where will Google’s ‘Facebook Killer’ would head towards, this also re-confirms one of my own personal beliefs about marketing technology based products.

My theory is, “In the race for winning market share of technologically innovative products, existing companies [no matter how big they are] will always lose the battle against the new company who innovated the market space”.
A small start-up named Twitter, innovated ‘Microbloging’. Google’s Buzz also ran.

When Facebook announced the launch of “Facebook Places” in August Last year, this was the same sentiments I had. In fact, I posted a comment on my friend Suranga Priyashantha’s Facebook page.

After just about 1 year since then, Facebook places is no more but Foursquare thrives to be the dominant player in location based social networking.

Foursquare innovated location based social networking. Facebook places also ran.

I’m not just concluding this theory with these recent examples. Let’s go back to the history.

Until the 80’s, IBM used to rule the world with their mainframes and mini computers with their own proprietary software. They partnered with a (then) new company named Microsoft to develop the operating system for IBM’s PC’s. Later, Microsoft realized the future potential of software licensing and they innovated a whole new era of information based computing, and industry called ‘Software Engineering’ and a breed of geeks called ‘Software Engineers’. Microsoft soon became the giant in the IT field and IBM had never been able to capture that leadership back from them.

Enter the 90’s and the dawn of commercial Internet. A new breed of “Internet companies” like AOL and Yahoo started to gain dominance in the market and attention of investors. Giant Microsoft retaliated with their own Internet products like MSN portal, Messenger etc but that never bothered AOL or Yahoo.

Towards the end of 90’s and 2000’s a new company started to emerge with a innovative search technology, which redefined the way we search for information. The beginning of the ‘age of Google’. Yahoo, AOL and MSN all tried to capture a fraction of the glamour that Google search engine had, but they never been able to catch the trick. MSN later introduced a “Google Killer” named Bing, but check the market share as of end of September 2011. Bing accounts for only 3.79% of total seach market which is about 2% less than what MSN used to have when they retired it.

Yes, Google was (and still is) the clear winner in the Search space, but did they ever read the social trend correctly? Before even Facebook launched for public, Google used to own a social networking site called Orkut but why did Facebook managed to crush Orkut in the social space (along with Myspace and Hi5) so easily? Answer is, Google’s corporate OS isn’t optimized for social, where as Facebook started as a company which ate, drank, and breathed social networking.

So the pattern is clear. Google will never be able to kill Facebook with Google+. Predicting the future, Windows Mobile, Symbian or BlackBerry will never be able to kill Android. My gut feeling is BlackBerry will be dead pretty soon, unless if they get their act together and focus on a niche where they can live up to the expectations of the customers.

So coming back to the question ‘who will kill Facebook?’. My answer is ‘I don’t know’. Back in 2005 no body ever predicted that Facebook will make it this big in just 5 years. So the future may be belonging to a company with an innovative idea, which we have never even thought about.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

Cheapest Android Smartphones in Sri Lanka: 10 Androids You Can Buy Below Rs. 34,999/-

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:16:00 +0000

Looking to buy an Android Smartphone but don’t want to spend a lot of money? Here’s the top 10 Android Smartphones you can buy in Sri Lanka, under Rs. 34,999/-! Yes, that’s if you have a budget of Rs.35,000/- for an Android Smartphone, you still have 10 options to compare.

Smart phones in Sri Lanka are not still cheap. Still, Rs.35,000/- is quite a big amount of money for an average Sri Lankan, so this give way for cheap Chinese feature phones in the price range of Rs.3,000 to 15,000. Most people go for these cheap ‘look-alike’ Chinese phones, thinking that they are functionally similar to popular smart phone makes like BlackBerry or iPhone. “Every cellular phone which comes with a QWERTY keyboard is not a BlackBerry”. (Unfortunately, there is a segment of the market in Sri Lanka who believe it’s the same). This is a market education requirement, which need to be addressed by the mobile phone operators in Sri Lanka.

Coming back to the topic of this post, let me list down the top 10 cheapest Android phones in Sri Lanka.

Huawei U8180 IDEOS X1 – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 13,303.06

Although it is a Chinese phone, Huawei is arguably one of those Chinese brands which comes with a respectable standards of quality. Sri Lankan consumers have experienced in using HSDPA dongles and other devices manufactured by Huawei.
Huawei U8180 IDEOS X1 is sold at a price of Rs.13,303.06 as a special offer by Etisalat Sri Lanka. Needless to say, the offer comes with strings attached by Etisalat but you have to accept that as a fair deal for an operator to attach commitments to their data plans for obtaining a special price on a handset. You can contact Etisalat Sri Lanka for more details on buying this phone. Phone runs on Android OS, v2.2 (Froyo). Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Micromax Andro A60 – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 19,500/-

Micromax Andro A60 is the first Android phone to be released by this Indian company. In fact, they released this Android phone in India with the theme “My first Smartphone”, giving the impression this is an entry level smart phone. I have no information about the Micromax Andro A60 price in India. However, in Sri Lanka this phone sells at a shelf price of Rs. 19,500/-. I have found few online advertisers posted this phone at Rs.16,500/- but I’m not quite sure about the condition of the phones sold at that price. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 20,900/-

If you are ok to start with slightly an old version of Android OS, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini is the cheapest option you can go for from the recognized OEM Sony Ericsson. This Android is based on Android OS, v1.6, and can be bought in Sri Lanka at a price of Rs. 20,900/-. Shop around at Unity Plaza or MC, or drop in at Celltronics, 422 A, Galle Rd. Wellawatte to check out this phone at this price. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 21,900/-

Another Android phone based on Android OS, v1.6 from the same OEM, Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 is priced at Rs. 21,900/- at the moment in Sri Lanka. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Huawei IDEOS X3 – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 22,300/-

Huawei IDEOS X3 is another special deal promoted by Etisalat Sri Lanka, with one of their monthly commitments attached to it. The published price is Rs. 22.300/-. Phone is based on Android OS V2.2. To get the actual price of the phone, you can contact Etisalat Sri Lanka and get a clarification on their strings attached to this deal. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 22,900/-

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro is based on Android OS, v1.6 (Donut), upgradable to v2.1 and is priced in Sri Lanka at Rs.22,900/- . Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

LG Optimus ME – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 24,990/-

LG Optimus ME is an Android phone based on Android OS, v2.2, which is reasonably priced at Rs. 24,990/-. Phone is sold by Abans Office Automations in Sri Lanka, so drop in by any Abans show rooms to inquire about this phone. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Samsung Galaxy POP – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs.27,500/-

Samsung Galaxy POP is by far the most popular Android phone in Sri Lanka. I’ve seen many people I meet, using this phone and speaking quite satisfied about it. The phone is based on Android OS, v2.2 and can be bought in Sri Lanka at a price around Rs. 27,500/-. Shop around at Unity Plaza or drop by at Cellular Connection, 86, Union Place, Colombo 2 to inquire about this phone at this price. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Samsung Galaxy Pro – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs. 28,900/-

Samsung Galaxy Pro is an Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard. Errrrr…. That’s the last thing I want to see on an Android phone. Androids are best on touch screen phones, and QWERTY is the iconic feature of BlackBerry. However, this phone is priced at Rs.28,900/- in Sri Lanka. Read the full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

HTC Wildfire – Price in Sri Lanka, Rs.32,900/-

HTC Wildfire is the Android phone model which I’m currently using. So far my experience with HTC Wildfire is ‘OK’, with no major complaints. I love the design of the phone it’s very sleek and smart. However, if you consider the camera as a primary need when selecting a mobile phone, my suggestion is to go for a Sony Ericsson. HTC seems to be having the worst cameras on mobile phones, and I’m totally dissatisfied with the performance of the camera on my HTC Wildfire. Apart from that, the rest of the features are quite good and this is a value for money phone under Rs.40,000/-. When I bought the phone 6 months ago, the phone was priced around Rs. 37,000/-. According to the latest prices, you can now buy this one at Rs. 32,900/-. I’ve seen some advertisers offering this at Rs. 26,000/- but I’m not sure about the quality. Read full phone specifications on GSMAreana.com

LG Optimus ONE - Price in Sri Lanka, Rs.34,990/-

LG Optimus ONE is the last in my list. This is the first Optimus phone launched by LG, and there is no significant fall of price in the phone after launching the Optimus TWO. Anyway, if you wish to make an inquiry you can drop by at any Abans show room or visit Unity Plaza to shop for this device which is priced at Rs.34,990/- in Sri Lanka. Full phone spec on GSMAreana.com

Do you know any other good Android phones which are cheaper? Please update the models and approximate price in the comments section below.

DISCLAIMER
These prices are as of 10th October 2011, and were obtained by calling few mobile phone traders in Unity Plaza and inquiring from people who recently bought these models. Prices can vary for many reasons, which I am not held responsible. I have no affiliations with business entities or brand names mentioned in this post, and I have not received any benefits from these vendors, brands, operators for featuring these products here.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath Please help improve the quality of this blog. Report any spelling or grammar mistake here

You Should Never Adopt Social Media Marketing at Your Company

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:42:00 +0000

Your products are having identified bugs but you don’t have a proper plan to fix them
You believe numbers are more important than customers
Your senior managers are overly obsessed with old school thinking of “uniform brand communications” and want you to filter each and every tweet, Facebook update, to qualify a certain checklist of guidelines.
You believe grammar and spelling mistakes on blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates are serious sins.
You plan to hire a high-end production house to shoot your Youtube videos
You want to take legal actions against a blogger on charges of copyright violations, for uploading your 1994 TV commercial to his Youtube account.
You don’t have time and people to reply comments made by your customers on your Facebook page.
You believe social media is free

Have more thoughts on why you should never adopt Social Media Marketing? Add as comments.

How Useful Social Media is For a Newly Launched Brand?

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:16:00 +0000

Today, I’m going to take one more unanswered questions from the workshop.

QUESTION: Than scanning an existing brand on social networks; what if there is a very new brand coming into the market & how useful will social media be?

I believe this question was asked by someone who found the “social listening” session a little bit irrelevant. Yes, if your brand is a new player in the market, quite obviously you can skip the “social scanning” steps for your brand name. However, you might still find it important to perform a social media scanning for your industry or for your competitors. By monitoring what consumers say about your competitor brands, you can gain some useful business insights.

If your ‘new brand’ is totally a new product (in a blue ocean; rather than in a red ocean), I suggest Social Media is the best platform to launch your product (depending on your target audience of course. If it’s a total new solution for harvesting paddy, forget about using Facebook to market it to farmers in rural villages).

Usually, new products go more viral on social media, than existing products. If the customer is exposed to a totally new experience, he/she is more likely to talk about it and share the news among their social networks. Think a minute, why Anything.lk reached 50,000 fans on Facebook in less than 3 months, while some of the other well known brands still struggle to find their first 1000 fans on Facebook? The reason why Anything.lk (a new brand) went more viral on Facebook was their uniqueness (at least in the local market) in their business model. If the ‘new brand’ you are talking about, have some uniqueness embedded, I believe you have a good prospect to try out in a social media campaign.

There are advantages and disadvantages for a new brand, compared to a well established brand coming on to social domain. An existing brand might face several difficulties to break the barriers of existing beliefs and prejudices of the people who manage the brand. They have already built equity around the brand, and brand owners might fear stepping into unknown territory of social media (this fear factor is holding back these established brands in entering social media). A new brand does not have this limitation. They have more room for experimentation, so they can easily adapt social media as a dominant element in their communications mix.

The main disadvantage for a new brand entering social media is, the difficulty of building a critical mass. Any social media campaign will take off the ground only if it catches a sufficient level of traction among a community. Established brand can enjoy the advantage of inviting their past customers to join the initial community around the brand on social media and hence easily reaching to this critical mass.

Coco Veranda in Colombo is a great example of a new brand which utilized power of social media to the maximum. Their marketing strategy dominantly dependent on social media tools such as Twitter and Foursquare.

To answer this question very precisely, I don’t think whether your brand is new in the market or not, is not a factor affecting the usefulness of social media. The question is “is your business results are dependent on consumer opinions and C2C recommendations?” If the answer for this question is a solid ‘yes’, social media definitely is going to be useful for your brand.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath Please help improve the quality of this blog. Report any spelling or grammar mistake here

How to Use the Facebook Contact Importer Tool for an Existing Fan Page

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:10:00 +0000

Just two days passed after another Social Media Marketing workshop in Colombo, and I’m back to blogging to keep a promise I made to the participants of Saturday’s workshop.

Yes, I made a promise to you that I will finish answering all unanswered questions from the audience, by posting my answers as blog posts here. There can be hundreds of others with the same questions as you, so I believe this will be for the benefit of so many other people like you.

I’ve got 11 unanswered questions and in this post, I’m going to tackle one such question.

QUESTION: If my FB page is already set-up, how do I upload my contacts to the page? As per the ‘import contacts’ option, [which appears] while the page is being set up?

Well, I believe the question is about “How to use the Facebook Contact Importer Tool for a Page That Already Been Created?”.

Here is a step by step guide, to find the “Contact Importer” feature on a Facebook page.

First, make sure you are an admin of the Facebook page and load your Facebook page in a browser window.

Next, click on the “Edit Info” link, just below your page name.

Then, in the left hand sidebar of the “Edit Info” screen of your Facebook page, look for the link “Resources” and click on it.

After landing on the “Resources” page for your Fan page, click on the “Tell Your Fans” link.

Clicking on “Tell Your Fans” will trigger Facebook Contact Importer window.

From that point onwards, it’s only a matter of following the contact importer instructions to find which of your contacts are already on Facebook. Remember, you can only import up to 5,000 contacts per page.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

What is This Facebook Subscribe Button?

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:23:00 +0000

Facebook recently ‘relaxed’ another level of user privacy on their social network by introducing the whole new ‘Subscribe’ Button on personal profiles.

Facebook Subscribe button allows you to get updates from people who are not in your friends list. You are by default get subscribed to your friends, while having the option of subscribing to non-friends status updates.

The intended usage of this new Facebook Subscribe Button is to allow people to stay in touch with public status updates from the personal profiles of celebrities, journalists and other public figures. I subscribed to Pete Cashmore’s (Mashable) updates this evening, allowing me to read all the publicly shared updates from Pete, on his personal Facebook profile. Earlier, Facebook introduced ‘Profile Migration’ for celebrities and public figures, allowing them to convert their personal Facebook profiles (with thousands of friends) into public figure pages on Facebook. This ended up being a nightmare for most public figures and celebrities who tried the migration option. I believe, this new Facebook Subscribe Button on personal profiles is another feature Facebook introduced to solve the same problem. For example, a celebrity or a public figure now can maintain their own personal Facebook profile (not a fan page) to be in touch with their real-life friends and to be in touch with their fans. All they have to do is activating the subscribe option on their personal Facebook profile for the benefit of the fans. When they update their status, they can choose whether to share it only among their friends, or to share it as a public update.

This new Facebook Subscribe feature immediately makes the fan pages for celebrities obsolete. While fan pages can still be used as a tool for companies and brands to engage with their customers, celebrities and public figures can now avoid the hassle of maintaining two profiles to stay in touch with real-life friends and fans/followers.

My natural instinct is, this is an attempt by Facebook to counter the competition from Twitter. Technically speaking, subscribing to Pete Cashmore’s public status updates on Facebook is more or less a similar thing to following @Mashable on Twitter. Facebook’s Status update feature had been their microblogging tool for several years, but it had the limitation of exposing only to immediate friends network. People would easily allow anyone to follow them on Twitter but they are more cautious about whom they add on Facebook. With this new Facebook Subscribe button feature, they solve this problem as well.

In a nutshell, I believe this is a positive move by Facebook to retain their users from competition. However, as users you must be overly cautious hereafter about what you say on your status updates, if you are going to share them as public. Read Facebook’s official article on Subscribe Feature.

7 Most Common Wrong Things Companies Do With Facebook Promotions

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:00:00 +0000

My last posting about ‘using Facebook for marketing’ received some valuable feedback, both as comments and direct feedback via email. Many companies, who have been doing this type of promotions, admitted that they were not aware of most of these Facebook promotional guidelines. In most of the cases, freelancers carried out such promotions as outsourced projects.

It is perfectly ok to outsource your Facebook marketing efforts, but someone from your brand team must keep an eye on the way your brand been portrayed on Facebook. For example, violating Facebook promotional guidelines may not cause you legal damages, or your page may not (at least immediately) be banned by Facebook for doing so. However, the negative brand image created by such promotions should of concern for the brand manager. Moreover, the vulnerability of someone else abusing your brand name to conduct fake promotions and spam Facebook users is very high, if you don’t adhere to certain level of quality in your Facebook marketing campaigns.

By observing some of the promotions being carried out on Facebook by various brands and companies, I identified 7 most common violations of Facebook promotions guidelines. I hope this will be helpful for you, if you are planning a promotion for your brand on Facebook. Remember, Facebook marketing isn’t free. Facebook worked hard to gather 600 million potential customers under one roof. It doesn’t sound rational for them to allow you do what ever you want to do to promote your products to those 600 million people.

1. Uploading a photo or video to the page’s wall and earning as many as “Likes” to win a prize

This is the most common method of conducting Facebook promotions. This violate the promotional guideline “ You will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any other action [other than liking the page] on Facebook, for example, liking a status update or photo, commenting on a Wall, or uploading a photo”

2. Downloading a photo from your page, and making it the profile picture to win a prize

Violates the same guideline as above.

3. Uploading a photo to your profile and tagging as many as friends to win a prize

Same problem.

4. Using Facebook as the “sole method” of announcing the winners of a contest/prize draw.

Facebook promotions guidelines state “you cannot notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.” Facebook allows you to collect the email address, postal address of the participants of a promotion and notifying them through such communications. You can write a wall post on your page to announce that the winners were selected and informed, and invite them to check their inbox to see if they are winner or not. However, you cannot post the names of the winners on your Facebook page and make that the sole communication to announce the winners.

5. Using Facebook comments as a tool to collect entries into a promotion, prize draw or a sweepstake

You cannot use Facebook’s standard features to collect entries for such prize draws or sweepstakes.

6. Giving points for users to collecting likes for a picture created through a third party application and rewarding winners based on the points earned.

This is a tricky one. Many people believe, using a third party application will cover you from all the Facebook promotions guidelines. However, if you use your application to encourage people to use Facebook standard features, in order to increase your chances of winning; then that will again violate the guidelines.

7. Conducting raffle draws for users who “like” your page

I’ve seen certain brands conduct raffle draws “One lucky winner will win XYZ when we reach 10,000 likes on this page”.

Any guesses how many times the guidelines being violated?

You might ask me, if all of the above are wrong things to do, then what can we do on Facebook to promote our brand? As Facebook promotions guidelines clearly state, you can administer an effective Facebook promotion using a third party application, which doesn’t violate these guidelines. Facebook allows you to make it mandatory to like your page, before entering a promotion. Best thing is to design your contest to run on a third party application, and making it mandatory for the users to “like” your page, before adding that application. You are allowed to use Facebook to promote the application through various viral features such as newsfeed postings and invites.

Someone might argue, these are just guidelines and not legal requirements. This opens the discussion between "marketing ethics vs legal mandatories". Each individual is vested with the choice of whether being ethical or not. However, this isn't necessarily about your individual choice, as the long-term likability of a brand is at stake.

The biggest concern here is, if this type of low quality work continues to dominate Facebook, the users (600 million) will start distrusting such promotions in the long run. This will spoil the soup for everyone, so it is very important for all of us to push towards maintaining higher standards in the marketing activities we do on Facebook.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

Social Media Marketing - Full Day Workshop on 24th September 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 14:28:00 +0000

Those of you who keep asking me about when will I conduct a Social Media Marketing workshop; here's a good news.

Epitom Consulting is organizing a full day workshop on Social Media Marketing, and I will be the resource person for the event. Epitom is a reputed company organizing training workshops in Colombo, and I joined hands with them for adding a range of Social Media and eMarketing related topics for their public workshop calendar.

The workshop planned for 24th September, is an entry level 'boot camp' for Social Media newbies. Our effort is to get more Sri Lankan marketers involved in Social Media, and conduct more engaging evening sessions on more focused topics in the Social Media domain.

Visit Epitom website for more details about the workshop or call them on 0114 37 4280 / 81 for registration inquiries.

Sri Lanka Reaches 1 Million Users on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:58:00 +0000

According to Socialbakers.com, last night Sri Lanka became the 76th country to reach 1 million users on Facebook. This happened, somewhere during last 48 hours, as the recorded figure stood around 997,600 when I last checked it on Tuesday.

Awesome, isn’t it? But what’s so significant about this?

Having 1 million Facebook users means, one out of every 20 Sri Lankans are now having a Facebook account. This is a penetration of 4.66% into Sri Lanka’s entire population. Keep in mind, the user base is heavily skewed towards the western province and Colombo city in particular where the internet penetration is at highest. A brand which is heavily targeting this demography should start looking at Facebook as a more serious tool to have in their communications toolkit.

A common myth among most Sri Lankan brand managers is, to believe that Facebook is a place where the teenagers hangout. Following graph will show you that, only about 13% of the total Facebook users from Sri Lanka are under the age of 18. A significant majority of 74% of the users are in the age group of 18 to 34. In comparison, a market like Indonesia is having a 27% of users on Facebook, under the age of 18.

It is interesting to see, from which age group the growth is mostly contributed. According to this graph, over the last 3 months the majority of the growth is contributed from the users in the age group of 18 to 24 and 25 to 34.

Even the age group of 35 to 44 contributed higher than the less than 18 age group. This might be a reflection of the fact that, Sri Lanka is anyway having an aging population. (Thanks to the massive campaigns done by the government during the 80’s promoting birth control!)

Popularity of Facebook among Sri Lankans contributed to several socio-cultural and political changes in the country. Facebook acts as a popular tool for the Sri Lankan diaspora to be connected to their friends and family in the homeland. According to many of my friends living abroad, Facebook is one of the main sources of accessing information and entertainment from Sri Lanka. (BTW, the 1 million Sri Lankan users doesn’t include the expats).

Are you a Sri Lankan Facebooker? Let us know how you feel about this whole phenomenon. How did you get involved first, and what pluses and minuses you see in this ‘social utility’?

Originally posted on http://www.amisampath.com/ Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

Google Plus Understands Your Social Relationships

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 06:51:00 +0000

Last few days I have been sandboxing with this latest ‘Facebook killer’ released by Google. It is a widely known fact that Google is having serious perceptional barriers to overcome at the launch of Google +, due to the blunders, they made in their previous attempts to tap into the social frontier (in other words ‘to kill Facebook’). Everybody knows what happened to Google Wave, and nobody cares what actually is happening with Google Buzz. So, what’s the big deal with Google +?

Besides my negative prejudices about Google’s ability to conquer the ‘social frontier’, I was pleasantly surprised when I spent few hours playing around with the new Google + interface.

Circles Makes Sense

One of the coolest features on Google + is their flagship feature “Circles”. One might argue, this is the same feature as “friends lists” on Facebook, but Google + Circles keep you in better control in managing different social circles you are a part of.

Where did Google + Circles come from? The whole idea behind Google + Circles, links back to the ideas of ‘social graph’ and ‘social clusters’. The social graph of a person, describe how he/she is related to the other human beings on earth, and how they acquired those relationships. Your social graph is a collection of ‘social clusters linked to each other by what it called a ‘weak tie’. A weak tie is a common member of two or more social clusters, who can bring them together at anytime. These weak ties act as a message carriers in between two or more social clusters, that they are a member.

The world is connected with weak ties between distant social clusters

The natural tendency is, we are reluctant to share the same information within all types of social clusters we are a member of, due to various reasons such as fear of being rejected. Take an example, where a well reputed doctor in a government hospital, who is also a great fan of rock music and baseball. This person is part of three different social clusters in this scenario. The co-workers at the hospital, friends & acquaintances he acquired by attending rock concerts, the regular bunch of baseball fans he hangout during his off time. The likelihood of this doctor discussing baseball or rock music during his work shift is less, because he fears being rejected among his work colleagues, who might dislike baseball or rock music. This is the reason why, despite the theory of “six degrees of separation”, it is very much impossible to communicate a message to the entire 6 billion humans on this earth, with only word of mouth alone.

Naturally, people like to keep their social clusters apart from each other. I don’t want to share everything that I share with my real life friends, with distant acquaintances I acquired through Twitter or other kinds of social engagements. I don’t like to share my political opinions with the people whom I work with, but I like to enter into a deeply engaging discussion about politics with my close circle of friends.

But, how can I do this? Before Google +, I used Facebook entirely for keeping in touch with my real world friends. I usually ‘think more than twice’, before I click on “accept” button on a Facebook friend request. If I have never met a person in my real life, or never even encountered a phone call with them, 99% of the time I will not accept a Facebook request from them. But that doesn’t mean they are bad people with whom I don’t want to associate! (It’s perfectly ok to turn down a FB friend request). That’s where Twitter comes handy. I use, Twitter to be in touch with all the distant acquaintances I acquire in my social encounters, but who are not close enough to share my political opinion or the latest photos from my family trips. Then there is LinkedIn, which I use solely for managing the professional relationships.

The question is, how practical is it for someone to actively and personally maintain three or more profiles for managing social relationships? How about the real life friends, you met at school and at work? Is it always the same things you discuss with these two different social clusters? I guess no.

This is where Google + Circles make perfect sense. Circles allow you to add your contacts to different social circles, and manage them as entirely different social networks. If you don’t want to discuss your political opinion with your work colleagues, all you have to do is limiting your post to “friends” circle or a custom circle you create for “politics”.

Easily drag and drop your friends to any of these circles. You can create custom circles as well.

This feature is already available on Facebook, as ‘Friend lists’ but it is a tedious process for figuring out how to use friends list. Google + Circles on the other hand, is very east to navigate and understand. It’s drag and drop interface makes it more easier to create different circles.

Once you finish adding your contacts to different circles, Google + will create a visual representation of your social graph. Where did you acquired your closest relationships, and who are the weak ties in between these circles.

And what’s more? When everyone finishes drawing their social graphs on Google +, it will be a wealth of information for marketers/politicians. Google + will become a road map for marketers/politicians, to plan their campaigns for influencing the purchase/voting decisions we make, by controlling the ‘social norm’ as in the theory of reasoned action. Makes perfect sense, isn’t it?

3.75G Vs 4G – The Telco War in Sri Lanka is On!

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Fri, 06 May 2011 17:52:00 +0000

So, the war has just begun and you are warned here to be vigilant! Because, your safety, as one of our ‘great’ presidents said once; ‘is your own responsibility’.

Of course I’m talking about the war among Sri Lankan Telcos to becoming the technology leader in the industry, and the ‘safety’ I’m talking about, is your rights and ‘dignity’ as consumers.

It was quite certain for a long time now, the ‘big two’ were preparing for a revolution in the industry. Top executives from both Dialog and Mobitel hinted that they are evaluating the possibilities of upgrading their 3G and 3.5G networks into 4G, and the “Future Today” event organized by Dialog a few months ago, hinted the market that they are up to something ‘big’.

But Sri Lanka woke up last morning to hear a different story altogether. Etisalat; who used to be positioned as a ‘slow mover’ in launching new technologies, throughout their company history under many brand names, announced that they beat the ‘big two’ to introduce a technology named 3.75G to their customers. This may well be the second time they introduced a new technology to Sri Lanka, after their pioneering effort of starting a cellular telephony system in Sri Lanka for the first time, back in the 90’s by their first brand name "Celltel".

Once the news broke on their Facebook page, it took les than 24 hours for ‘big two’ to respond. Mobitel were the first to retaliate with their announcement of testing 4G in Sri Lanka, under the supervision of director general of TRCSL. Dialog’s response, up to now is a change of their website with a flash banner (linking to nowhere as of the time of writing this) with the tagline “4G. Your Future Today”.

Earlier today, I asked several questions on Etisalat Facebook page to get some clarifications about the 3.75G technology. They were claiming, they can support up to 21Mbps with this new upgrade, and I asked them is this a guaranteed speed, and whether the TRCSL endorsed these speed tests? To my disappointment, Etisalat never gave clear answers for any of my questions. There were no proper definitions given, to explain what 3.75G is, and how it is different from 3G or 3.5G. They vaguely said, the speed can vary due to many reasons. No response given to me about my questions regarding TRCSL endorsements. They were simply saying “We always give you the best available technology”.

Up to now, not in any single piece of communications released by Etisalat regarding their 3.75G launch, they talk about what they exactly mean by 3.75G. Not even in this press article.They always refer to it as "super fast 3.75G internet connectivity", but the explanation of how 3.75G is different from 3G is nowhere mentioned.

I did my own research, and only to find out that 3.75G is nothing else than the HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) protocol, which is already being used by Mobitel and Dialog in their networks. According to many online sources I referred, HSPA is an evolutionary stage of WCDMA technology which was originally dubbed as 3G. Original WCDMA protocol used HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) as an evolutionary technology to increase the data downlink speed. Industry pundits dubbed the introduction of HSDPA as the 3.5G. Technology today, as we all know it keeps on changing and it took not many years for them to figure out an extended version of HSDPA to increase the data uplink speed as well (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). When HSDPA is combined with HSUPA, you get everything in a one package called HSPA, which industry pundits dubbed as 3.75G. Now as far as I know, through out past several months, both Mobitel and Dialog has been using HSPA technology in their networks (these companies can correct me, if I’m wrong about this), so literally they were already on 3.75G. However, neither of these two companies made it a marketing point to claim “we have 3.75G” which I believe, Etisalat took the advantage of. In final analysis, what Etisalat launched today, was actually not ‘new’ to Sri Lanka. They were as always ‘late’.

Now, above is the technical reality of this whole 3.75G saga, but how about the marketing reality? Because, from the marketing point of view, reality exists in the consumer’s mind, not in technical explanations like above.

From a marketing point of view, Etisalat has already done the damage to the ‘big two’, as every claim now onwards the ‘big two’ will make about 4G, will fall into the category of “market reactions”.

The important fact from the point of view of the consumer is, you have to be vigilant about what is being told in advertising and what actually is the truth. In a test carried out by TRCSL, it was revealed that the internet download speeds advertised by operators are never practically available for the consumers. When Etisalat say “up to 21Mbps”, they mean the shared bandwidth of the network. This won’t guarantee, the actual speed you are getting. According to my experience, normally when an operator promise 36Mbps, I get something like 1Mbps in reality. I think, TRCSL should intervene more strongly about the advertising of broadband products. Like the consumers affairs authority made it mandatory to publish the prices of every product being advertised to the consumers, regulations must be introduced, all these download speeds are tested and approved by TRCSL. And also, there should be regulations to make it mandatory to advertise both the network capacity speed (up to 21Mbps) plus the average speed a user is actually getting.

All in all, as I predicted in a ‘tweet con’ with few technology enthusiasts in Sri Lanka, early this year; 2011 is going to be the ‘year of broadband wars’ in Sri Lanka. My only wish is, the consumer should get benefited from the rivalry among operators, and the country should be benefited at large, by increase the internet penetration levels and broadband speed levels around the island.

Disclaimer:

I’m not an engineer or a techy person. What I wrote above, regarding mobile communication technologies, are based on personal research I’ve done on the internet, and with some inputs from discussions I had with few people in the industry. If there are anything incorrect mentioned, please kindly correct it in the comments section.This post will be tweeted to all three companies named here, so they hold all the rights and responsibility of voicing on behalf of them in the comments section.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

Things You Must Know Before Using Facebook for Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:14:00 +0000

If creating a Facebook page and running an ad to promote it, is everything about Facebook marketing; my grandmother would have made a good social media marketer if she lived in this day. Unfortunately, we see people using Facebook for marketing, as if they are using their grandmother’s wisdom for doing it.

I’ve been telling this over and over again; social media marketing is becoming spoiled day by day, simply because of the lack of integrity, lack of marketing touch, and lack of professionalism among the people who handles this. Not anyone who knows how to set up a Facebook page or a Twitter account is a social media marketer. Marketing is a profession, as well as a well-established body of knowledge. Social Media is only a tool, to execute this vast body of knowledge. However, unfortunately in Sri Lanka (and most places of the world where Social Media is less evolved), the task of running a company’s social media marketing presence, is assigned to the least qualified bunch of people to do that; the techies. This derives from the common myth that “Internet belongs to engineers” (because they created it??). To add fuel to the fire, the average marketing professional in any given company are way too much backward when it comes to dealing with new technology, so the job defaults to the guy who is most comfortable with the media.

In certain other places, the marketing department already handles social media but yet they make these same mistakes, simply because they are too lazy to dig into detail before they execute something.

It is because of these factors, that we see some blatant shortcomings in the way some companies handle their social media marketing efforts. These shortcomings can put your company in trouble, if a concerned party moves for legal actions. Furthermore, such unprofessionally done Facebook campaigns might undermine the brand equity of your company.

Listening to drive time radio this morning, I heard that one company is doing a promotion on Facebook, targeting the Cricket World Cup. The instruction was, to take a photograph of yourself wearing the product that is being promoted, and upload that photo to the brand’s Facebook page, and then invite as many as friends to ‘Like’ it. Now, how many of you know that this is a serious violation of Facebook terms & conditions? Most of you might not know, because not everyone bothers to read all those small print before they sign up for Facebook. But, if you are planning to do a ‘marketing campaign on Facebook’, isn’t it safer (or a good idea) to read through those terms? At the end of the day, do you like to see your brand’s Facebook page be banned for violating terms & conditions?

Today, many brands take it granted that they can use their Facebook page to do what ever they want to do, including conducting sweepstakes, contests, and various other types of promotions on their page. However if you look at their guidelines for pages, it clearly state “You will not administer a promotion through Facebook, except through an application on the Facebook Platform. Administration includes operation of any element of the promotion, such as collecting entries, conducting a drawing, judging entries, or notifying winners”

The guidelines further reads as..

You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as posting on a Wall of a Page, uploading a photo, or posting a status update.
You can: Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content to the application. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo to a third-party application to enter the contest.
You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by liking your Page, checking in to your Place or connecting to your Platform integration.
You can: Require entrants to like your Page, check in to your Place or connect to your Platform integration before they provide their full entry information, such as name and contact information.
You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.
You can: Collect an email or address through the third-party application for the promotion in order to contact the winner by email or standard mail.
You cannot: Instruct people (in the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion.
You can: Instruct users to visit the third-party application to enter the promotion (as described in Section 2.3.2.1). Since users must have a Facebook account in order to access an application on the Facebook Platform, if you give this instruction, they will be prompted to sign up for a Facebook account if they do not already have one.

Read full document on Facebook guidelines for Promotions

So, it is clear when looking at these guidelines that even some of the big brands in Sri Lanka, are clearly violating these policies. You wouldn't violate the Broadcasting act or other regulations put forward by media stations, in your above the line campaigns so why would you do it on Facebook? It isn’t much different from using a pirate copy of MS Office, in your company. So, dou like to see your brand is positioned as a Facebook pirate?

Violates T&C's of FB. Don't do this for your brand!

Besides the guidelines and regulations from Facebook, there are certain other areas that you have to concern when administering a promotion on Facebook.

If the prize you are offering worth more than LKR, 100,000, you must register your promotion at the Western Province revenue department (if your company is registered in Colombo, Gampaha or Kalutara districts) or the ministry of home affairs (for businesses registered in rest of the country). The registration number must be published on every material you use for promoting the contest. Many people believe, this does not apply for promotions conducted online, but the truth is this rule still valid if you are a Sri Lankan business, doing a promotion online.

Apart from these mandatories, you must follow some other standards as well. For example, if you are running a contest which award some prizes for selected winners, you must publish the mechanics of winning. You must elaborate how people can win this, and what terms & conditions apply. Especially because we are conducting this on a platform accessible by anyone across the globe, you must specify the geographical locations where the promotion or contest is valid.

So once again, I suggest you to take a re-look at the way your Facebook marketing is currently done. If you are an agency doing FB marketing for clients, you are not only putting yourself in trouble, but you are putting the innocent clients in trouble who trusted you to do a professional job. There were some incidents in the past, where Facebook shut down some of these mismanaged pages and clients only got to know their agencies were doing the wrong things after losing all their Facebook likes.

Social Media Beyond Just Marketing (Refresh Colombo February 2011 - Video)

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 03:09:00 +0000

Make LOVE on Social Media!

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:21:00 +0000

It’s Valentine's Day, and isn’t it the right time for your brand to make some LOVE on Social Media? You’ve heard, your customers are already on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare so it’s your turn to catch up with them if you already haven’t. Here’s what you have to do. Make LOVE!

LOVE - Listen, Observe, Voice, Engage

Listen
Listen to what other people are discussing on Social Media places like Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Observe
Observe the patterns. Are they talking about your brand? Is it in a positive sentiment? Observe the norms of each network

Voice
Raise your voice and start talking when appropriate. Use what you have observed, as conversation openers

Engage
Extend the conversation by deeply engaging with your audience. Give feedback and help people to solve problems

Happy valantine’s day!

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

eMarketing for Travel & Tourism Trade - Photos from the Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Workshop Title: eMarketing for Travel & Tourism Trade
Date & Venue: On 12th February 2011, at Galle Face Hotel, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Speakers: Suranga Priyashantha & Amitha Amarasinghe
No of Participants: 25 participants from some of the leading hotel chains, boutique hotels, travel agencies and airlines in Sri Lanka

ANNOUNCEMENT: Change of Event Venue

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:41:00 +0000

ANNOUNCEMENT: Please note that the venue of eMarketing for Sri Lanka Travel Trade - One Day Workshop has been changed to Gall Face Hotel (Room: Lotus D). Event will commence at 9 am and will go till 5 pm

Workshop: Internet Marketing for Travel & Tourism Trade. On 12th February 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 05:03:00 +0000

ANNOUNCEMENT: Please note that the venue of eMarketing for Sri Lanka Travel Trade - One Day Workshop has been changed to Gall Face Hotel (Room: Lotus D). Event will commence at 9 am and will go till 5 pm

Travel and Tourism sector is one of the main industries in the world which is being positively impacted by the Internet usage of their customers and online implementations by excising business firms at different stages of their value delivery chains. But the tourism industry in Sri Lanka is still not getting the maximum benefit of these trends due to many reasons and the knowledge gap in the industry on Internet Marketing appears to be one of the top among these reasons. The main objective of this workshop is to narrow this knowledge gap enabling the decision makers and implementers to confidently put their ideas, plans, and strategies into action in the field of eMarketing and eCommerce.

Who Should Attend this Workshop?

CEOs/Directors/MDs/GMs/Senior Managers/Executive Staff who are involved in the decision making and implementation in sales, marketing, advertising, public relations, direct sales, online sales and marketing, online distribution, eCommerce, website management and maintenance or any other type of activity which contribute towards reaching the end customers and/or intermediaries of Hotels, Airlines, Travel agencies , Tour operators and any other business type in the travel and tourism sector.

Workshop Dates and Venue

~~12th February 2011 (Saturday), from 8.30 am to 5.00 pm at the Auditorium of OLAK Group, T.B.Jayah Mawatha (Darly Road), Colombo 10, Sri Lanka.~~
ANNOUNCEMENT: Please note that the venue of eMarketing for Sri Lanka Travel Trade - One Day Workshop has been changed to Gall Face Hotel (Room: Lotus D). Event will commence at 9 am and will go till 5 pm

Registration Fee and Procedure

Rs 5,900 per person (Inclusive of lunch, refreshments, stationary and other materials)

Cricket World Cup 2011 Will Become the First Ever ‘Social World Cup’

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 19:16:00 +0000

I still can remember watching the 1992 cricket world cup as a 12-year-old schoolboy. Technology wasn’t no way near what it is today during those days and I remember we talked about the ‘stump vision’ camera as quite an achievement of the history of technology. Most of the matches were not live telecasted here in Sri Lanka as the cost of television rights and satellite downlinks were not justifiable for national TV to go for a full coverage of the tournament. We did not have SMS news alerts or Cricinfo.com either, to get regular updates about the matches. As a result, we got to know the results of some of the matches Sri Lanka played in the group stage only after watching the 8.00pm newscast on TV. The only person I was able to ‘discuss cricket’ during those days, was my (then) 85 years old grand mother. Yes, my grand mother was a great fan of cricket, so we both sat together to watch the match on TV.

Then it came the 1996 cricket world cup. Boy! Can I ever forget that magical moment when Arjuna Ranatunga scored the winning run of that final match against Australia in Lahore? That was simply awesome, and ironically again, my grand mother was right next to me watching the match with several other close relatives of my family. I have never known how Australian fans felt that night when Arjuna smashed Shane Warne for consecutive sixes and showed his tongue to the Aussie leg-spin maestro. There was no line of connection between Aussie fans watching the match down under, and the Sri Lankan fans watching the match here.

15 years since then here we are; just only 29 days away from another cricket world cup. The things are significantly different compared to1992, including the rules of the game and the way technology is used in every aspect of the game. Coming from 2007 version of the cricket world cup, we wouldn’t see much of a difference in the way technology is used inside the ground and in the TV coverage, but there is a significant difference in the way fans are going to interact with this version of the cricket world cup!

Get Ready for a Worldwide Social Experience of Watching Cricket

Yes, this is going to be the world’s first ever “social cricket world cup”. When the 2007 version of cricket world cup was staged in the Caribbean, Facebook had less than 50 million users worldwide, which now has reached up to 600 million users. Twitter has not even reached 1 million users by then, but now has become the most common form of keeping in touch among many of the younger generation. Technorati reportedly tracked about 15 million active blogs back in 2007, and the number has now risen to 500 million active English language blogs as end of 2010. Smartphones was a luxury affordable for only a few people in the society but thanks to the heavy competition among smartphone manufactures, it has now become a commodity in most parts of the world.

If we put these pieces together we can expect what is going to happen in this year’s cricket world cup. No one is going to watch live cricket matches while talking only to their grand mothers! Imagine a Sri Lanka Vs India match (possibly in the knock-out stage). Cricket fans from both countries will discuss the match live and real-time, using Twitter hash tags and Facebook walls. When Tendulkar hits a ball for a six, an India fan might tweet “Yaaaahoooo! A six!!! #CWC2011 #INDVSL” while a Sri Lankan fan might react with a tweet “Oh shit! #CWC2011 #INDVSL”. The entire experience of watching a cricket match sitting in your living room will become totally refreshing. When Australia play Sri Lanka in the group stage match in Colombo, most probably @JustJimWillDo will watch the match from his Melbourne home while @budhajeewa will watch it at his home in Matara. I most probably be seated inside the R.Premadasa stadium (if I get lucky enough to grab a ticket in the phase 2 issue). No matter where we are watching the match from, all three of us (amongst virtually millions of other fans) can connect to each other with a simple tweet with the hash tags #CWC2011 #AUSVSL. Was this even imaginable back in 1992?

Already there are several fan-initiated blogs to write about Cricket World Cup 2011, and you can find me writing in some of those places once the action starts on 19th Feb. Already I have made several twitter friends from all over the world who are big cricket fans like me. I’m sure they all are awaiting till the ‘cup that matters’ arrive in their respective home countries.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath

Coco Veranda – A Sri Lankan Example of a Brand Well Peopleized

noreply@blogger.com (Amitha Amarasinghe) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:24:00 +0000

If you read my last blog post describing the concept of “peopleizing” a brand, you might come up with the intuitive question “is this possible?”. You might ask, are there brands who have managed to do this already?

As it’s the case with any new concepts, you won’t find dozens of practical examples at the initial stages as the concept itself requires lots more improvements and modifications based on practical insights. However, I can give you a one good practical example from a Sri Lankan café located in Colombo 07000; Coco Veranda.

My first interaction with Coco Veranda and its co-founder was, when I did them a PPC campaign on Google for their sister company The Bloom Room. By that time, Coco Veranda was doing relatively well on social media, and I realized how potential is this brand to flourish as a perfect example for a social media success. Later, I got deeply involved in the TweetupSL event, in which Coco Veranda played a huge role to make the event a major success.

Today, we can cite Coco Veranda as a perfect example of a brand which is ‘well Peopleized’ among their target community. Unlike most other brands who jump into social media bandwagon; Coco never went after number of followers and ‘likes’ obsessively. They never try to use social media as another channel of ‘advertising’ to force their marketing messages down the throats of potential customers. Instead, they got involved with the community with a genuine desire for social media, and created genuine relationships with real people. This ‘authenticity’ factor in Coco Veranda’s social media efforts, helped them establish the ‘trust’ element so strongly within the community. Today, Coco Veranda is not just a mere ‘faceless brand’ for social media users in Sri Lanka. Instead, “Coco” is a real person with a distinct personality. That ‘person’ interacts with other people in the community with more of a ‘human to human’ interaction.

The point is, Coco never entered the social media scene with a pure sales intention. That is the very reason why Coco had been successful in improving the ‘likeability’ among the community members it interacts with regularly.

Here is a small video case study I did about Coco Veranda. The video includes an interview with the co-founder and joint Managing Director; Mr. Sarath Chandra Sathiamoorthy who is the main man behind Coco’s social media presence.

Originally posted on www.amisampath.com Like this blog? Get email updates when I post next time, or subscribe to the feed on a reader. Follow me on Twitter @Amisampath