Social Media, Entertainment & other rants...

Blog Basics #1 - How to start a blog?

2012-06-24T23:31:00.001+05:30

Since I have been approached by many people - friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc asking on how can they start a blog, thought it would be better to write a post & redirect them to it rather than narrating the same story to each of them. But instead of writing the entire script at one go, believe it would be easier to share it across multipe posts highlighting the basics.

Now that it's a series of post that I shall be doing, this is what you can expect in the coming week(s) (I have a day job too).

1. Content Strategy (It has been covered in earlier post here)

2. Platform

3. Promotion

4. Monetization

Before going further, you might consider to read one of my earlier post which covered the 'Basics of Blogging' written as part of the #AtoZChallenge. That was a short post though given the challenge was to write daily. This post instead is a detailed one to let the readers understand each step to achieve their goal which is 'Starting a blog'

One of the biggest decision once you have decided your niche areas for blogging and/or content strategy is about choosing a blog platform. Remember, there are several options here and it depends how much premium you're ready to pay. (there are free ones too, which is where I start)

1. Free Services or Hosted Blog

If you are of the 'testing the waters' kind, it makes sense to use one of the free services to start your blog. Listed are 3 popular options that can be utilized:

1a. Blogger

Blogger started as one of the earliest forms of free blogging site, where they eliminated the need to setup exclusive softwares on your site. Instead, they offered to host your content on their site with the catch that your blog would come up as .blogspot.com. They have since move to map custom domain, but there are still certain restriction on the designs, plugins.

1b. Wordpress.com

Often, we have seen people getting confused between Wordpress.com & Wordpress.org. The significant difference is, Worpress.com is a hosted-blog service, where it offers space to its registered members & your name appears as .wordpress.com. Again, like Blogger, there are few designs & plugins available for use. But the biggest difference is, you cannot have a monetization services like Adsense on this free service.

1c. Tumblr

Tumblr, I would say is rather a splash page where you can either redirect your social feeds or post your own content on their site. It could be more like your online diary, where certain posts are made for public consumption where there is no certain content strategy.

2. Self-Hosted Blog

2a. Wordpress.org

Wordpress.org gives a download option of the very popular Wordpress blogging software. The software can be installed in your local machine as well as on the hosting server and helps you easily setup blogging capabilities on your OWN site. It also gives you access to innumerable themes, plugins which can be configured per your requirements.

2b. Blogging softwares

If you're a power user, it makes sense to install a blogging software on your host server and have a strong team who can design it specifically for your purpose. Remember, those were the early days of blogging and many amongst us used it when Worpress.org was not around. I do not have any personal favorites here though because I haven't used any.

Your turn

Which of the above or others are you using & what has been your experience. Do share you stories & enlighten the post, readers.

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RebelMouse Reviewed - My First Thoughts

2012-06-13T15:50:00.000+05:30

We had talked much about RebelMouse in one of the twitter chat few weeks back & had decided to give it a try. Since the guys are still in beta, I had registered and waited for their invitation, which I got it today morning.

As a big lover of social media tools and since it was setup Paul Berry (ex CTO Huffington Post), I pounced upon the opportunity to review it and here are my quick first thoughts:

Pros:
1. Easy registration, just link with your Twitter id
2. Clear interface where you get a visual treat of the twitter, facebook feed
3. Nice dashboard, allowing to link multiple social platforms - Twitter, Facebook
4. Choice of themes
5. Allows to add self-curated content - links, posts, images
6. Image Album creation
7. This is what I liked the most. 'Freezing' content - The ability to highlight content.

Cons:
1. Looks like Twylah look-alike

Verdict:
Nice to see someone combining the power of Tumblr, Twylah, Scoop.it into one platform. I look forward to using it more often.

Here's my RebelMouse Page if you would like to follow.

In case you haven't heard about them yet, do visit them here. You can also read about Paul Berry's plans for RebelMouse in this interview with Gigaom.

Hope you have got an invite too. Please try and share your views about RebelMouse here & let the team know about it. Also share the link to your RebelMouse Page and I'll follow you.

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How to Create Content for your Blog

2012-06-10T21:30:00.000+05:30

andriuxuk via Flickr

As a blogger, one of the most common grouse I share with any of my fellow bloggers is to find fresh content for their blog. It's imperative for us to find & create content which is interesting and revs up the audience. We need to create content from the topic we love & would like to have the audience love them too. And believe me, it's not easy to be creative & generate content regularly.

In case you have just begun to write, do visit this post to understand the basics of blogging.

Then how do we do it?? I have list few tricks on the way I create content for my blog posts:

1. Google Reader

Google Reader, pull up feeds from the subscribed list & show the posts in a stream. I agree, there are various RSS reader tools, but I still love the simple interface of Google Reader. Since I read multiple blogs, it is difficult to keep a list of them & visit regularly. So, If I have liked a certain post, usually subscribe to their feed so that I stay updated with their content.

Reading to the various posts, and being updated helps me to think about the topics that would resonate with my audience.

2. Scoop.it

Scoop.it allows you to curate online content into a dynamic digital magazine. It also connects to various social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc allowing you to share the content you like. Similar to Google Reader, you need to subscribe to the user's posts to get them streamed on your page.

Since, the users of Scoop.it also pull post for different places on the web, skimming Scoop.it has helped me to look for ideas from beyond the few chosen people that I follow on Google Reader. It just takes me about 30-45 odd minutes to go through the list & I have my ideas flowing.

3. Disqus

Disqus is a global comment system that improves discussion on websites and connects conversations across the web. I have installed 'Disqus' commenting system on my blog & while it has indeed brought some traffic, the best part is, it has encouraged people to comment & these comments are indeed helpful at times to produce post.

Let me tell you, comments, either on your post or other posts where you have shared yours, are a great place to have discussion, are at times greatest inspiration for your own content. Since, there would be people commenting on your post, you'll know what their challenges are & how certain content has got the audience interested. I remember one of the Klout post that I did a while back, to my surprise, it got comments within 5 minutes of being posted and the various discussions gave me inspiration to write more on certain challenges.

In addition to these three tools, I also use Twitter lists. The utilities of Twitter lists has already been covered at multiple places like this and so I'll refrain from covering here.

Also, I have started to use list.ly lately, though am yet to utilize its potential, but I do see that it can be an excellent tool to make a 'list' and have it crowdsourced. It's a great idea from Nick Kellet & Shyam Subramanyan and I am looking forward to use it more often. You can find me on list.ly here.

Your Turn

How do you think that these post will be useful to you? I would like to hear your opinion, you know it counts. As I told, comments are a great source of inspiration and I love them coming from you. Also, you might even share your source of ideas/inspirations using the 'comments' below. They would be helpful to us - the bloggers. Remember, 'Sharing is Caring'.

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5 Free Useful Twitter tools

2012-06-03T01:10:00.001+05:30

This is one article that I have been waiting to write for a long time. Since the time I started using Twitter, my list of following/followers have gone quite huge and initially I wondered how can someone manage such a large list. But then, I started using few tools which help me manage my content, recommend tweeps to follow, manage followers and engage. While there are good number of tools available out there and I also keep checking out newer ones like this one --> SeeSaw (am liking it so far), below are the few which I use quite religiously.

1. Hootsuite

Hootsuite in a nutshell is a Social Media management tool. It provides a dashboard which can help you to track Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin accounts, RSS feeds. As far as Twitter is concerned, you can add multiple tabs to view lists or even get updates on a particular hashtag.

The reason I chose this app was its ability to provide me a browser based interface which made it easier for me to access from any device, any where & still have the same tabs. In addition to it, it gave me the flexibility to schedule my tweets and also get analytics over the tweets that I had shared. In its PRO version, you can also add 'team members' which allows multiple entities to manage the same account.

2. BufferApp

This is the second tool that I use the most. BufferApp has helped me to share my content anytime of the day & through any device. As it is evident, once you use Twitter more, that there are particular times during the day that your content has the potential to attract higher number of click. BufferApp allows you define such time. Once you had done that, you can simply load your content to its list & they will be delivered during the time you have specified.

Buffer has helped me to automatically post my content at certain times. In fact, I have integrated my buffer account with ifttt & Google Reader. You might want to look at this post by Peter Trapasso to understand how bufferapp can be leveraged along with ifttt & Google Reader.

3. Commun.it

The basic principle of 'social media' is about being 'social'. I had always found it hard to cultivate any relationship over the web which I realised was because of the absence of engagement. I hardly engaged with my audience initially and it was only a one-way street where I just sent out information. Once that error was realised, I tried looking up for tools that will help me engage with my followers and I chanced upon a beta-invite for Commun.it. And, since that day, it has been my de-facto tool to manage my relationships.

Commun.it has helped me gain insights to my new followers, top engagements & based on your information sharing, it also recommends followers. It's a great tool to help you manage multiple relationship. Go ahead and use it!!!

4. SocialBro

A late entry to the block has been SocialBro. It allows you to manage, generate deep analytics about you Twitter account. The tool is available as a Chrome add-in or it can be downloaded as a desktop app on all the leading OS.

One of the best use of the tool so far has been its ability to integrate the 'Best Time to Tweet' feature with BufferApp. Now I can just run the report & the results gets integrated with BufferApp, allowing me to tweet at times where my message has a better potential to be read.

5. Tweetchat

Ha!!! Now if you are a Twitter Chat addict like me, you need not look beyond 'TweetChat'. You can just specify a hash tag in the search space & you'll start viewing all the tweets which contain that particular hash tag. Login with you Twitter credentials and you can start conversing with tweeple directly from the tool without adding the hash tage (they add it on behalf of you).

I stumbled upon this tool during one of the twitter chat where I was unable to follow the conversation as Hootsuite was too slow and Tweetdeck too fast. In a particulary fast Twitter Chat, TweetChat allowed me to 'pause' the conversation, so I could look back few tweets & respond.

For someone who lives by Social Media, it is very important to bring out the message from the noise. These tools have indeed helped me manage the Twitter universe, since Twitter itself has been proved to be inadquate to provide such option. Hope, you find them equally useful.

Your turn:

What do you have to say about those tools and also let us know what tools you use to manage you daily activities. Looking forward to your comments.

Is Facebook Greedy??

2012-05-20T22:29:00.002+05:30

The Facebook IPO is just out & they have had a fairly good opening. And it has even trumped Google to become the second most valuable company on the Wall Street. But the news that just went viral was about the small charge Facebook is going to levy to 'highlight' post. They seem to have done a small test, but the first thought that really came up to my mind was, "Is Facebook greedy??"

We have observed now that Facebook is one of the most popular social platform with nearly 1 billion users and it earns revenues in billions from the numerous ads. With the recent design update, it gave users an option to highlight certain post, so that it does not get lost in other conversations. In one of the statement that Facebook has made, its seems that only 12% of your followers actually see your status update. But with an option to pay $1.80 fee per highlight, the update can remain at the top of your followers feed for a longer time. But was the move really necessary at a time they were going into IPO or was it just to have Facebook appear more lucrative in the run-up to IPO.

Since they have a fair earning already with the tons of ads on the platform or to say 90% of its revenue is from advertising and with enterprises trying to 'highlight' updates to ensure they stay on top of users feed, seems charging them is plain greedy. Not to say, the moves also has not gone down very well with the users.

Though they have experimented already in New Zealand, hope sense will prevail & it may not roll out in other countries. Else, I am afraid, it could benefit Google+ with user moving to its "still-free" offerings.

Your turn:

Do let me know if you think its a wise decision or should they wait for the IPO dust to settle down and then release updates or are they really greedy?? And if they do put charge to highlight an update, how will it effect your content strategies?? Are you ready to pay?? Share your views using comments below.

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Top tips on SEO for your Blog

2012-05-13T21:18:00.001+05:30

Image Credit - Stuart Miles

SEO or search engine optimization is a way to increase the rankings of your content on the search engines. It helps in generating much required traffic & engagement by having your content getting listed at the top by the various search engines. Content on your blog is no different. It helps to follow certain rules while writing your blog post to have it discovered by search engines & rank it above other blog post. In addition to traffic & helps you generate $$ too.

Last week, over the #blogchat Twitter Chat, we had this interesting topic being discussed. Those 60 minutes were pure pearls of wisdom having Lee Odden (@LeeOdden) co-host it along with Mack Collier (@MackCollier). Guess, it was Lee's second time that he co-hosted #blogchat & this time especially to teach the lesser mortals about optimizing their blogs for search engines and social network. We were indeed thankful to Lee as he was away in Antwerp for a speaking event and it was 3 AM his time we started twitter chat.

Listing down few of the pearls from the event that I helped me learn on optimizing blog in addition to the Content Strategy tips:

Optimization extends beyond keywords & links
Blog SEO is a cycle: Plan, implement, monitor for editor opportunity & progress, measure, refine, repeat.
Write on-topic, on-target - keywords will come up organically.
Write blog content around a keyword.
Ensure you have your keywords in the title & first paragraph
1-3 keywords for every 100 words
Engage on Social Media - Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest (it drives 5% as much traffic as Twitter & Google)
Share on Google+, remember they own Google Search
Use "Permalink" on blog so title and keywords show up in URL
Optimize to share, engage. More of each will push your search engine rankings
Dish out Content regularly, ensure you have an editorial calendar

Pitfalls:

Bloggers should be aware that Google is actually penalizing some forms of SEO now.
Overuse of keywords in a post
Search engines, Google or other, understand text - metadata, links and not images.

Tools:

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
InboundWriter
ScribeSEO

And do follow @LeeOdden & @MackCollier. They did a great job in driving this session.

Do you have any other interesting tip to share on SEO for blog. Share it with us using the comments section below. Would like to hear your tips.

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Top 4 reasons to participate in Twitter Chat

2012-04-29T20:06:00.000+05:30

Twitter Chat

In the last few months, I seem to have caught up with the Twitter Chat bug. For someone who's is making foray into the social media marketing world, it is an apt form of communication and learning.

What is a Twitter Chat anyway??

When you have spent some time on twitter, you do come across situation where information is exchanged between individuals. Suppose you group these individuals, throw a topic and let the thoughts flow, there goes Twitter Chat :). In an ideal situation, it goes like:

1. Setup a date/time

2. Suggest a topic

3. Setup #hashtag, in order to help people follow the conversation

4. Send out invites

But end of the day, the biggest question that arises, how does it help ME?? I have been lucky enough to have exchanged ideas & befriended some of the great individuals in the Social Media world using twitter chat. Here are my top 5 reasons, you should be part of Twitter Chat:

1. Engagement

One of the clear advantage of being a part of tweet chat is the increased engagement. When a topic falls into your sweet spot, you are bound to get sucked into the discussion. Various chats encourage you to post questions, which gets answered by the panel or other participants. One of the best forms of engagement in real time.

2. Build Intelligence

For instance, the recent chat we had at #Toolschat on Kred. I have not yet adopted Kred since the great fiasco of Klout and there were participants with similar concerns over the scoring. Participating in the chat on that day, helped us build intelligence about Kred and also similar enterprises - PeerIndex and likes. We were able to uncover the pulse of the various users of Kred and guess it helped Kred to gather feedback informally, which may help in future investments.

3. Focused Followers

If you are in the game, where you fret on the number of followers, my advice, this is not the place. But in case you want to follow or get followed by key individuals in your space - do attend the chats, regularly. Here's a place where you get to interact with like-minded individuals and engage with them beyond the chat sessions.

4. Promotion

The above example of Kred, exemplifies the power of Twitter and Twitter chats. It's your time to be in the limelight. As an enterprise, you might want to sponsor a Twitter chat or be a guest panel on a day & tell the participants how your product(s) can help them. It will be a chance to educate potential customers about your products and one of the best methods to serve information and source feedback.

Well, we have IBM coming to #GetRealChat on 5/1. Be there on Twitter at 9 PM EST and follow the hashtag.

As part of my regular activities, I participate in the following chats:

a. #BlogChat

b. #SocialChat

c. #PinChat

d. #SMChat

e. #GetRealChat

Let's engage there.

You might also want to check out the Mashable's 15 Essential Twitter Chats for SMM

Has Twitter Chat helped you?? Share how?

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Why Facebook bought Instagram

2012-04-23T14:46:00.000+05:30

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram has come as a big surprise and the thought that echoed everywhere was ‘Why did it buy Instagram??’, an application which would just cater to sharing photos, using multiple filters, through mobile. With multiple theories going around the blogosphere, the most notable was why would Zuckerburg spend $1 billion on this app just before the IPO.

Here are my thoughts on why Zuckerburg's Facebook picked up Instagram:

1. Kill Competition

It had been rumored that Twitter or Google had expressed interest in buying Instagram & were gathering resources for it. Facebook probably wanted to nip the competition in the bud and snapped it before any of them. The speed at Zuckerburg made the decision, having the negotiations done in a week, lends credibility to the story.

2. Valuation

Instagram, a baby of Kevin Systrom, was until now available on iOS devices & most recently Android to enhace photos, with its multiple filters saw its valuation increasing from about $100 million a year ago to $500 million recently. Similarly, its Android launch saw its user base increasing with almost 5 million downloads in 6 days. So it made sense for Facebook to pick up an commercially successful app just before its IPO & make itself a lucrative investment.

3. Engagement

Facebook had its own challenges in coming up with a mobile based app especially when most of its users like to share photos & messages. Having a mobile based app would have certainly helped them. Compared it to Instagram, it has been the most successful mobile based app to share photos where numerous users engaged over their photos. Facebook could leverage on the multiple filter abilities that Instragram provides & take user experience to a different level. A definite plus for them.

My opinion is that the buying of Instagram should accelerate the growth and engagement on Facebook, which can translate into more ads generating inorganic revenues for Facebook. Either way, it might be hard to justify the $1 billion investment, but it has indeed helped Facebook stump its competitor and by the time they wake up to develop their own capabilities, Facebook might have taken a huge market share.

Do you justify the $1 million payout irrespective of knowing that Facebook had deep pockets?? Share your thought using the comments section below.

D is for Digital Marketing

2012-04-15T00:57:00.000+05:30

Ever since Internet became the heart of communication channels, companies are finding ways to leverage it for marketing benefits & that essentially is all about 'Digital Marketing'. The marketing world has seen a paradigm shift in their campaigns while moving from traditional channels to the digital space.

The advent of search engines saw the marketer lapping up SEO, ad banners, PPC strategies as part of digital marketing, which promised that your brand pages lands at the top. And now even these are being tweaked so that they suit the more prolific social channels rather than focusing on the entire internet space. The intent is clearly to be heard and reach out to more customers.

This blog post is part of the A to Z Challenge and I would be glad to see your comments on "Digital Marketing"

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Content Strategy - Top 5 Clues

2012-04-06T07:57:00.001+05:30

Courtesy: nokhoog_buchachon

The letter of the day is 'C' and for the guys in Social Media world, its stands for the dreaded 'Content Strategy'. As marketers & especially in the social media space, tt's the singlemost aspect in deciding the success of content going viral. A good content strategy should ensure that it is easy to be found & engaging.

For the content, that has essentially gone viral, on careful analysis, you might see a pattern. Ape it!!!

Hence, its essential to have a good content strategy at the heart of any campaigns so that you gather enough leads. Here are my top 5 clues to help you ace content strategy:

1. Define niche

Identify an area of expertise to talk about. Reader's come to your blog to learn something, but if cannot offer learning on the same subject over your posts, chances are, they are not coming back. Capture the trends in your domain & write about it, you'll always have the first-mover advantage.

2. Determine Audience

Based on the post you have written & the traffic that has been generate, analyze your audience. You should be able to know which part of the world reads more, shares more. Target this audience by ensuring that your post covers what they want.

3. Curate Relevant Content

It would be a difficult task to think about content day in & day out. So better curate content. Internet is flooded with noise, determine what you want. I use channels like Google Reader, Scoop.it to curate content for my blog.

4. Include Call-to-actions (CTA)

One of the most important aspect of any content strategy is to have a CTA. You need to be able to get the reader on what to do next after visiting your content. Asking them for opinion, to share or even getting them to download your ebook are good CTAs.

5. Social Sharing

The last one though has to be about sharing. Give your reader multiple opportunities to share your content. Pick up any one of the plug-in available over the web & have it on your page. Make it easy for the reader to share your content.

This are some of the tips that I have gathered by experience & am trying to master it.

My CTA for you is to share it, as I have put multiple social sharing links (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Stumbleupon, Buffer.it). You can also share your opinion using the comments section below.

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Basics of Blogging - A to Z Challenge

2012-04-04T09:06:00.000+05:30

Blog - Image Courtesy - Stuart Miles|FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When the competition is about blog, I thought why not write about blog & see if we share a common understanding. For me, blogging was to share - the information that I gather over my normal day, my opinion about a particular story (like the employee issue at Goldman Sachs) or do some plain talking. Over the years that I have been blogging (not so consistently!!!), I have learnt the finer nuances & to succeed, these basics have to be mastered.

Sharing some of them:

Rule 1: Have an Aim

Now that the Blogging bug has bitten you, find a purpose for the blog. Determine if you want to write an an individual or represent your company because that will shape up your following. Also determine your niche.

Rule 2: Content Strategy (That's going to be the next post :-) )

In a nutshell, your content strategy should help you define the content that will be suited to the 'Aim'. You cannot be writing a food recipe on a technology blog. Defining a content strategy will also help you to source references that are of relevance, remember its a sea of information out there.

Rule 3: Editorial Calendar (My post on how to do it)

As a rule of thumb, to make yourself heard, the noise you create has to be persistent & consistent (look ma!! I rhymed it). Post regularly, but to do that effectively, make sure you have an editorial calendar in place. It helps you in planning of the post well in advance & also ensures focus

Rule 4: Promoting

Once you have posted it, let people know about it. Use the various social channels to share your post. Twitter can be leveraged by using tweet chat or personal interactions, similarly you can use Triberr (to ensure more coverage) or dlvr.it (to share at multiple social channels) . Make your post SEO friendly, it gets the search engines interested.

Rule 5: Engaging

Last but the most important aspect is engagement. Best engagements can happen over a blog post & your views has the ability to get more moolah too. Ensure you respond to comments, tweets & any sharing that happens for your post, it shows people that you care.

I do care about engaging too and the guys at Disqus have done an amazing job to have me setup their comment platform. Do drop in your comments below & lets tell them they have done an amazing job. Also, tell me if you like my blog and share yours for me to comment.

Follow me on Twitter (@malharbarai) or 'Like' the Facebook Page to stay updated.

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A - All aboard the A to Z Blog Challenge

2012-04-01T23:32:00.000+05:30

Today is the Day #1 of the A To Z challenge & am on board writing the first post.

As part of the challenge, we are supposed to write a post on each of the word as given in the schedule. Think its easy?? Get registered, as the A2Z Team is still accepting requests. Believe me, this is going to be a huge blog marathon & I feel great to be part of it.

My Top 5 reasons to pick up the challenge

1. Regular Post

2. Wider Audience

3. Great Traffic

4. Interaction with other Bloggers

5. Gain Influence

Looking forward to the semblance that it can bring up in my posting schedule & well not to forget some good traffic too (Who doesn't like that as a blogger)

Haven't heard of A to Z Challenge?? Visit their blog today and register if you can. Seems almost 1600+ bloggers are already registered.

And if you have already registered, do share your Blog Link using the 'comments' below.

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Reminder - Facebook Timeline: Are you there yet??

2012-03-30T08:10:00.003+05:30

Only one day to go before Facebook applies mandatory upgrade to your brand pages.

Do it now!!! - is the word on street. Facebook had last month asked users with brand pages to try the new timeline feature. They offered users to upgrade & have a preview of the features. Post that, users had an option to roll back to the older version and revise their content strategies. But that is going to end tonite. Here's the message Facebook has sent to the users:

Reminder! Tomorrow starting at 11am PST we will begin to migrate Pages who have not upgraded yet to the new Timeline format. If you admin one of those Pages, you still have time to get your Page ready by adding a cover photo, milestones, etc. before tomorrow! Check out these tips from other Page admins: https://www.facebook.com/marketing/posts/10150758346981337

So, if you have still not put your upgrade strategy in place, NOW is the time to do it. Make sure you're equipped atleast with:

1. Cover Photo

2. Pinned Story: One post that you would like to highlight.

Pinned Story

You can check more about Facebook Timeline at the official site.

And here's my updated Facebook page. Go ahead and click the "Like" button on the right & would be glad to engage.

Do share the link of your Facebook page using the "comments" section below.

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How not to use Social Media

2012-03-15T11:29:00.000+05:30

Goldman Sachs

Guess your morning social feeds would have been inundated by the news of Greg Smith leaving Goldman Sachs and his damning revelation of the state of affairs in the organisation. On Greg's part, it is sad that he has to leave the organization after putting 12 years of efforts since joining as an intern.

With his article in the NYTimes Op-ed going viral, it does seem that people are interested in knowing what goes on at one of the most revered organisation as it concerns money. He has indeed stated that the culture & leadership is all concerned about making money, and moved away from its basic tenets of serving its customers to enable them make long term investment decisions, but my take is which organisation isn't into that.

Unlike when he started 12 years back, the times have changed drastically now. These days people do want to make money fast and do not might getting battered for a while. That is the sentiment that helps organisations like Goldman Sachs & others run their business, so nothing wrong with it. End of the day, its all about "money".

But resorting to a public smear campaign leveraging social media was quite uncalled for. This issue could become a classic PR case & we would have ample bytes being written about it (I leave that to the experts).

Do utilize the comments panel below & share your take on the issue. I am still skeptical about supporting a disgruntled employee.

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Social Media & Changing Food Habits

2012-03-11T21:31:00.000+05:30

You can say, this journey of change in food habits started during my first visit of the US. Almost, 8 years back I tasted 'Pad Thai' and 'fruit tart' for the first time & instantly fell in love with it. Since then, I have been trying to perfect it & today it tastes good & so my wife wanted to put up the recipe on her food blog (haven't obliged her with the Pad Thai recipe yet :-) ). The discussion with her though brought to my notice how the food habits around us & including ours have changed with the proliferation of social media.

Food is something that is intrinsic to all of us & you can gauge the popularity with the number of blogs dedicated to it, be it - healthy, organic, vegan, pastries etc or the number of photos appearing on Pinterest.

So what is driving the change?

Frequent Travel

Food habits in each of the country were quite unique to the place of living, but since the late nineties when people started traveling places frequently as the businesses started going global, there was this sudden interest to learn recipes of distant lands. Today, mom's recipes has been replaced by food blogs.

Social Channels

A visit to thekitchn.com made me realize the number of contest taking place - Healthy Blog, Best Food Photography & others. And the key drivers of these contests is the healthy dose of sharing across the social networks - Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest (offlate).

Even the food chains have become suave enough to have presence on Social Media and ensure that they grab eyeballs as well as business. Take the case of McDonalds & Subway brand pages on Twitter.

But more than them, its the individual contributors who write regularly - the likes of Chinmayee Bhat @LoveFoodEat or Sukaina @SipsAndSpoonful or Susan Voisin @Fat Free Vegan.

These folks have made sure that the traditional recipes are shared & adopted. In family dinner or even otherwise, the eclectic dishes are indeed derived from either a blog or probably the host came across a Tweet or Facebook post.

While, I can't still make out what a ganache means, my wife has already put her baking skills to test (unfortunately on me!!!) tonite.

Do share your thoughts & how your food habits have changed. Make use of the comment section below and share your favorite recipe or two and your thoughts. Meanwhile, cheers to Pepperica (@jalbarai) for igniting these topic.

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New: Facebook Timeline for Brands

2012-03-02T08:05:00.001+05:30

NEW: Facebook Brand Pages

Voila!!! Facebook has indeed launched its timeline feature for brand pages as promised during fMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) and we are already seeing brands lapping up the changes.

For starters, there is a preview available so you might want to have a look at how your page will appear after the change.

But, in case you decide not to change, well, you do not have a choice because according to Facebook, all the brand pages will appear in the new timeline format after 30th March. So better adopt the change & play around for a while to build some super looking brand pages.

And why this changes??

It seems that post IPO, Facebook wanted to leverage on the revenue potential of Ads & Sponsored stories and latch itself to paid content. With premium features, it can take care of both as the stories will appear in the News Feeds of the fans & also paid content will appear as 'story' after log out.

Another ability is to 'highlight' as post. Something that you would like to appear a the top irrespective of what day you posted. This gives brands an opportunity to showcase some of its best content & get better CTRs.

Also, it will move away from what appears as 'like' based marketing, where you had to 'like' the page before being able to comment or view images.

More information on the changes can be found at Facebook

And here's how my updated Page looks like:

Malhar's Social Media Page

A detailed follow-up post on how you can create the new brand page & better leverage the features coming up next.

Do share your thoughts on the new changes & if that will that help Facebook or brands drive additional revenues. Would love to hear from you all.

Have a great weekend ahead!!!

Check out my about.me profile!

How Pinterest can help Emerging Markets

2012-02-26T22:00:00.000+05:30

Over the last few weeks I have been glossing over the fact that Pinterest is driving much of the social traffic. It has been a site which has generated a great amount of (p)interest in the social world off the last few months & well, I was kind of lured to visit. Just as we saw a huge amount of noise created by enterprises to launch their brand pages across Twitter, Google+, Facebook - this year start seems to be devoted to Pinterest.

What is 'Pinterest' ??

The first thing that stuck me was that the site is still not officially open to all & is strictly invite-based. Not that it would be an issue as I have never heard anyone's request turned down, but I agree, its a better way to keep off some unwarranted noise.

Started by Cold Brew Labs with an intention to share images based on themes, Pinterest helps users curate images from various website using its 'Pin it' button or by uploading the image & is shared over its canvas (pin-boards). It basically is a platform where images can be shared & marketed.

While I was waiting for my request to be approved, which was done over a due course of time, I took some time off to ponder over the facts (from Mashable):

Pinterest -

is the fastest to reach 11.7 million unique visitors in Dec 2011 (comscore)
Has 10.4 million registered users (Source)
Averages 1.36 million users daily
Has 68.2% users as women
Has a healthy 3.6% referral topic, better than Youtube, Google+
Estimated unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429 percent from September to December 2011. (via Monetate)
Top interests in the U.S.: crafts, gifts, hobbies/leisure, interior design, fashion designers/collections. (via Ragan.com)
Has seen 289% increase in apparel retail traffic between July - Dec'11

Looking at those stats, you're sure that it would be an interesting business proposition to put your wares on the Pinterest platform.

Volkswagen USA

Have a look at Etsy or Volkswagen USA boards on Pinterest & it will be easy to gauge the kind of potential Pinterest has and it would make sense to to have your items displayed there.

And the one market that can obviously leverage on the social channels was the "Emerging Markets". Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) in those markets can certainly gain a mass following outside of their geographies by having a display over and above their own portals.

Pinterest offers a very simple way to get you onboard & start pinning (the equivalent of displaying & linking product photo).

1. Get an account. Simple go to the Pinterest site & "request for an invite". Enter your preferred email id & you should soon have a link from the team to proceed with creation of your account.

2. Create a content strategy. Gregory Pouy's presentation shall help you decide on the strategy.

3. Create Pin-boards. Login to the account & start creating pin-boards based on your product themes - Weddings, Formal Wear, Casuals, Gift ideas. It will help you manage the product lines & an easier track back.

Etsy

4. Pinning to Portal. Each image on the pin-board can be linked to your portal. Also, like this user, you might can also display the price on the pin-board & get the viewer to visit the website to transact further.

5. Promotion. Link the pin-boards to popular social sites like Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and enterprise can achieve better mileage for their brands.

6. Feedback. Create a board where users can re-pin your products & based on the products shared, the enterprise can determine the demographics of the users & promote the range of products in a particular geography. eg. A user in the Middle-East, Asia tropical region shall not be looking to buy woolen clothing designed for colder climates. Such information can be leveraged while creating pin-boards.

I believe this are good times for the SME in the emerging markets to grab some eye-balls & create a generous fan base. With the kind of growth Pinterest is going through, it has to be part of the content strategy for enterprises in these markets to leverage it over & above the conventional portals & other social fan pages.

But yes, there have been concerns over privacy & copyrights over the images being shared which I believe would be thrashed in coming days.

Needless to say - "Go ahead...Needles are waiting to be pinned" !!!

So, do you find some of these strategies exciting?? It would be great to hear your views & learn about other successful ideas and how they are being implemented.

Let me know through comments & will be glad to engage in the conversation.

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How-to setup an Editorial Calendar for effective Content Strategy?

2012-02-12T22:15:00.000+05:30

Image Courtesy Stuart Miles

Writing is a wonderful art & over the time since I started to write - blog, articles, whitepapers or for that matter any content, I have found that the only way to better it, is to follow a certain content strategy.

Your single most goal is to build content that will generate more traffic but the challenge is how-to translate that into action...

Regardless of your goals, one of the way to setup an effective content strategy that can improve over time, is to build a "Editorial Calendar". I have seen multiple templates available on the web, but having picked up few of them I have gone ahead & personalized it to suit the content that I produce.

An editorial calendar is a great way to do forward planning - research, et al for your content and also helps to keep track of your ideas, users.

Though, one of the goal that every content strategy should address is to show up on the search ranking, so have a post that has a blend of "search engine" specific keywords in title & post.

Here the glimpse my "editorial calendar" and you might want to personalize it to your requirements:

Editorial Calendar

I've divided my calendar under columns like:

Week

As I do my posts on weekly basis, the first column was to put a date/week for each content. It helps me channelize my research, thought process in the run-up to the week.

Key Goal

Its good to define your key goal at the start. It has been my experience that until you have a certain goal in mind, it would be difficult to setup your thoughts over the huge amount of noise generated on the web.

Heading

The first place where the viewer might get interested to go through your content is the "heading". This is the single most piece to attract viewers and gather a certain fan following. Also, the traffic from social channels will most probably be driven by it.

"Headings" need to be creative, suggestive or even controversial so that viewers will read further & comment too.

Have a tentative heading to start with as you might need to revisit after you have defined your keywords.

Keywords

Go through any SEO optimization techniques & the stress is to have maximum coverage of keywords.

"Keywords" supposedly are instrumental in driving the traffic to your site from the search engines. Make sure your post, heading have a mix of them so that your page is search-engine friendly.

I make sure that my post has a good set of keywords for it to appear in the search engines & help drive first-time visitors.

Hits/Week

Once I am done with posting my content, I track the stats for a week. It helps me to analyze the content of my post - what worked & what didn't.

A deeper analysis can reveal which channel has generated traffic - search engine, Twitter, Facebook. It is one detail that can helps you to decide which channel to emphasize for your content.

Comments

These is a very personal column that I use to deduce the judgmental errors.

It helps me in planning for my next post & I try to avoid the mistakes that could have occurred in previous posts...

And while you are here, do not forget to leave your comments. They are welcome & helpful too...

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5 'P'illars of Social Media

2012-01-03T21:50:00.002+05:30

(Image credit: 'Idea Go' at freedigitalphotos.net)

"2012 has arrived & here's me wishing you a fabulous year ahead"

The goal for year forward for all of us will be to become as engaged with customers as it could be possible. Social Media is one such medium which offers limitless opportunities - product launches, interesting offers, events, photos to get engaged or even generate new business.

In the first post of the new year, am listing the 5 key pillars to achieve success on "Social" channels - Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus et al. Whether you are starting your social media journey or you're already at the top, these few ideas can help you notch up the efforts in the right direction.

1. People

Invest in 'people'. Get on-board people with knowledge about the medium - the multiple channels, SEO, PPC; to ensure that your organisation covers all the possible medium of communication. Ensure, you or the team engages with the audience thereby giving a personal attention to them.

2. Process

Build a set of questions on your motivation to target the medium. That will help you in demystifying the medium and enable to streamline the process to achieve the required goal. Make sure to document the process which can improve the depth of knowledge assets.

3. Product

Put technology to work. There are companies who have already developed "products" that help you take greater advantage of the existing social medium

- Timing your updates - Use Timely or Buffer (@BufferApp)
- Social Media Monitoring & Engagement - Use Radian6, Commun.it

4. Proliferation

Scoop the web, certain best practices are already out there. Utlize these assets & spread awareness about your brand, activities across diffrent social channels.

5. Promotion

Since you have taken steps to proliferate your organisation, brand the last critical step is to promote. Focus on engagement (2-way conversation), quality of your messages (not the number of messages). Engagement with customers will lead to stronger relationship & word-of-mouth publicity. But remember, social media is not spamming.

Thanks for reading through. Please do comment & share your thoughts, let's get engaged!!! Happy New Year!!!

Follow me - @MalharBarai, Facebook Page, GooglePlus

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The New Twitter Brand Pages

2011-12-18T23:10:00.001+05:30

Twitter recently rolled out changes to the UI and many of you will agree that the new look is quite suave & gives the user a great perspective on the investments folks at Twitter are making to become user friendly. In this race of social media platforms to out do each other, the users are at a great advantage to experience some great innovations.

But the one feature that Twitter rolled out & what could be potentially a BIG competition to the world of Facebook & Google+ is the launch of its brand pages. The folks at Twitter have been rather kind enough to not name the feature as "Brand Page" but as "Enhanced Profile Page". The new feature though is available to select users at the moment & I had a chance to have look at the page of @McDonalds

Brand Page Features:

1. Pin a Tweet/Feature your content

And as I hear from the street, one of the best ability of this new feature is to pin a tweet or again in Twitter's parlance is "Feature your content", which effectively allows the brands to highlight one of its most engaging content helping them to drive much more inbound traffic. This tweet remains at top of the timeline and has the ability to hold non-textual content which would be most useful when brands would like to share an image or video. (Look how enticing the Big Mac looks :-) )

2. Banner/Header

The other big change was to have your brand logo, image, tagline or other content at the top which could be a major differentiator for visitors to classify from normal user page to a brand page.

There are 20 more Twitter Brand pages other than @McDonalds and the list can be found here.

What's your view?? IMHO, I am looking forward to the day when Google+ or Facebook launches the "pin" feature, but until that time, Twitter shall be the most chosen medium to share brand information.

Do drop in your comments/feedback below or at my Facebook Page or Google+ Page or tweet @MalharBarai

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5 Effective Social Media Strategies

2011-11-27T22:33:00.001+05:30

Now that you have put across your first tweet, blog post or created your Facebook Page or Google+ Page, you need a sound plan to succeed. Scout the net & you should find tons of links to help you succeed & I promise the following post might not be too different, but then its just some of the strategies that have help me while starting for zero. You'll need these strategies, as there are competitors who are ready to out-do you & by the time you master it, a success story would have already been born.

(Image Courtesy: Creative Commons)

Do read this before you dish out the next piece of information for your followers:

1. Identify your target customers

Before you begin your next update, gauge your target audience - area of interest, age, geographical area. Gather an idea of what they would like to hear or see. Ensure that your blog has appropriate visual appeal and aesthetics to keep the reader interested or have interesting Twitter headline to make it clickable.

2. Scout appropriate content

To ensure that you share content, that would make your customer "share", research on the subject. List out the sites, blogs, news within the domain & subscribe to feeds. Staying updated with the trends will help you to share latest contents which is what your customers are looking for

3. Update regularly

The only reason will have followers is they expect information from you. Keep updating, and once you share regularly, they will know where to look out for any new happenings or get information on the subject. Set aside atleast 15-20 minutes in a day to update. And with the host of tools available now - Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, its easy to schedule your updates.

4. Interact

The best way to master your social media skill is to interact with other users or you audience. Be prompt to respond to comments - positive or negative. Start making connections with the folks from your industry, start participating in discussions, share your thoughts. The law of attraction works very well in this medium.

5. Promote

Now that your content is focused & an audience set up, start promoting self or business. This will ensure that your stories are heard instead of it being picked up from all of the noise generated on social media channels.

And these were some of my strategies to succeed over social media. Few of them are easy while other might take a while but remember, social media does take time and money.

Well yes on Thanksgiving & otherwise too, a big thanks to all the readers of this post and my blog. Love to hear your comments or success stories as usual.

Good Day!!!

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How to create Google+ Business Page

2011-11-12T23:24:00.001+05:30

One of the biggest news of this week was the launch of Google+ Business Page. It was the news that we had been waiting for since the launch of Google+. True to industry grapewine, it has indeed placed itself directly against Facebook. Also, the creation of Google+ Business Page was like a walk in the park, I had no rumblings at all.

Presenting here, some easy steps to create the Google+ Business Page, which has also been explained at the Google+ Blog.

Step 1

Go to http://plus.google.com/ and login with your Google+ credentials. On the right hand bottom, you should find a link "Create a Google+ Page" or you can directly go to http://plus.google.com/pages/create and login and proceed to step 2.

Step 2

On the create page, select appropriate category for your business. Enter the name of your business, website and sub-category. Based on the content of your page, select the viewer type.

Step 3

Next step is to customize your page. Make sure you have a catchy tag line, something that would entice the viewer to visit or like it. You can even upload a photo of your business.

Step 4

Finally, spread the information about creation of your page. You can share it with your colleagues or a small group initially. But before that, do load the page with some content. That will help viewers to understand your focus areas & want them to visit back.

Step 5

There you have, your own personal Google+ Page. Get going, invest sometime to post content regularly to have more visitor on the page.

Few of the best pages I have come across till now and more recently Toyota too.

Thanks for reading through & here's my page.

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To Klout or not!!!

2011-11-06T19:00:00.000+05:30

"Klout just did a Netflix"

Read one of the tweet on my timeline & that prompted me to go & look back at my score. Aghast!!! Mine had dropped drastically.

One of the most buzz all over the social network in last couple of week has been about Klout scores either dropping significantly or in some case improving. The buzz was good enough to have an hashtag #OccupyKlout at one point of time. That picked up my interest & have a closer look at the issue. And I found the Klout announcement saying it had changed its algorithms measuring your social engagement & influence. Which truly meant that it was trying to have a close look at the traversal of your content across the network.

According to this post at Klout site, the changes shall cover:

True Reach - How many people you influence

Amplification - How much you influence them

Network Impact - The influence of your network

While they promised accuracy, transparency and scores either remaining same or going up, but from the reactions that I see, the number of people disgruntled with the lower scores is far more than the ones having an improved score. But then the real question was:

Should I really care about my Klout Score??

Yes, I have to say a big emphatic yes to it. Regardless of how you view it, the score helps you to understand if the group of people you have been interacting or have as your followers are truly influential. Having a network of influence does matter as at end of the day you are marketing your brand or services. The score also gives you an enormous recognition + reputation as "influencer" or otherwise.

But then, what went wrong??

As I gather the dust around it, I read that Klout applied the algorithms on historic data too, and the re-calculated the old scores too. This was probably the biggest mistake it did. Having wiped out the previous scores certainly hit users in the wrong place.

The other place where it wronged seems to be the lack of transparency. It is highly impossible to tell why you score is falling down as the company has kept its algorithms secret.

And neither did the following tweet help:

While the jury on whether the change in algorithm effects the clout of Klout is still not ascertained, but the fact remains that there are now fewer individuals who really trust Klout and it might have to lost the ground a bit to Pee rIndex and Kred.

Thanks for reading through. Appreciate your comments.

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How to increase your Twitter Followers - Top 10 ways

2011-10-17T23:30:00.000+05:30

Twitter has been a terrific place to share information and links to information. But to have your content read, you need to have a large pool of followers.The greater the number of followers, the more influential your content is.

Today I shall list down few steps that have helped me to increase the number of followers:

#0. No one likes an egg- head (yes, I have deliberately number it 0 as this is the most important step)

Egg-head is the default image that Twitter give. Maybe you have liked it & would not want to change, but we would like to know the person sharing content. No pets, no monuments and no scenic locales. We would like to know YOU.

#1. Get a short bio

Give a brief description of yourself, your interest/passion. Potential followers do read the bio besides reading your content.

#2. Share your internet footprint

Provide like of your blog or company URL or Facebook Page. They should know what else to follow. Also, these turns out to be a good SEO exercise. Ensure that you put up the "tweet" button or "Follow me on Twitter" button on those sites

#3. Follow the leaders and build connections

Whatever your choice of subject, follow the leaders & get an understanding of what they share. This will give you a fair idea of what the acceptable norms of content sharing is within that domain. But do not stop yourself at just following the leaders, build connections with other users whose content you find interesting

#4. Start sharing content

In a given day, you would be reading a lot and gathering information on your choice of subject. Share all these meaningful content. Preferably, it should be links, because given the 140 char limit of Twitter, you might not be able to convey the entire message. So, lead your followers to information. Use the URL shortening services like bit.ly, ow.ly or goo.gl and many others. Twitter has recently started shortening the URLs using its own t.co service too

#5. Tweet Regularly

This step should in fact be high up the order. Remember, your followers are expecting information from you. Keep sharing, and once you share regularly, they will know where to look out for any new happenings or get information on the subject. You can use services of Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule your tweets

#6. Repeat your Tweets

Something that I learnt very late, and this was while listening to Guy Kawasaki. Do repeat you tweet, as you would never know which part of the world is following you. A tweet in the US day time would hardly be seen in the timeline of someone in India, unless it is repeated in their day time.

#7. Engage within the domain

Try to get yourself heard. Engage in the various conversations happening over Twitter & share your point of view. Chances are, few of the readers will like it & start following you.

#8. Do not SPAM

Whatever your reason of joining Twitter, make sure you do not SPAM the followers. This is a strict No-no.

#9. Ask questions

Another form of engagement is to ask your followers some questions or set up a poll. You can then share the results over your blog.

#10. Thank followers, re-tweeters

But make sure these are done as direct message. Other followers are not interested in whom you have thanked & once you reach a certain number of users, your timeline shall be filled with these messages instead of the content incase they are public messages.

Thanks for reading through. I can be reached on Twitter @malharbarai

Do leave your comments & I would be happy to engage.

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How To Get Over The Social Media Noise

2011-10-09T22:10:00.000+05:30

With plethora of Social Media Platforms do you find yourself lost?? It seems so often that with an unprecedented rush by enterprise to implement marketing strategies unheard of till now and grab your share of attention thereby adding to the "noise" in the social space. With millions of users across Facebook, Twitter & add to it the latest entry of Google+, the "noise" created is overwhelming.

Take this, it took Google+ only 16 days to notch up 10 million users since its launch whereas Twitter took almost 780 days and Facebook 852 days to have the same number of users. And, the "noise" created by these platforms with its multiple information feeds, ads is just increasing which might shadow over the real information (a reason you went social)

But as enterprise, with growth in number of social platforms, you ought to master the art of getting the users attention to the platform of choice & span several minutes to get over the other "noise". You need to be able to connect with the audience, talk about the topic they are interested in and be able to share it without inhibition.

Here are few tips to get over the Social Media Noise:

1. Enchant readers with the right titles

How many times have you given a pass to one of you Twitter update or a Facebook update, because you didn't find the message interesting. The trick is, have a subtle message & do not oversell. No one likes to be told to act in a certain way. One of the great post by Jeff Bullas explains it.

2. Spread message across multiple platforms

I have been following Guy Kawasaki, Pete Cashmore (Mashable) - you name a platform and these guys are already there. They are the best in business and have ensured to ride over the Social Media wave and get their message heard. They were amongst the first few users on Google+, and ensured that their posts continued on the new platform thereby increasing their fan base.

3. Post regularly & multiple times in a day

Have a schedule, make sure you post regularly. Coke Studio by MTV India makes sure to post regular music updates on their Facebook page. This ensures that the massive fan base they generated during the first season remains glued and when they go into the second season, they'll have a certain number of fans increasing their TRP ratings.

The other lesson that I learnt from Guy was to post multiple times in a day & the simple reason we tend to overlook is - you never know which part of the world is reading your message. Posting the same message multiple times ensures that fans in any geographical location will have it in their timeline/feed.

4. Reply to comments and engage readers

Once you have posted, expect people to comment. These comments could be good, bad or ugly at times, but then readers have the right to share their point of view. In the same vein, it would be good that you reply to each of these message & help readers to understand your point of view. The more you engage, readers will tend to love your post. They will also help in having you make an informed decision on certain subjects. Engagement will ensure stickiness to your page as the readers are comfortable that you understand them.

And how to ensure you get comments, read this. One of the best I have come across so far.

5. Be Concise

This is the age of fast-food. With the kind of attention span we have these days, no one will read a 100 line post. I have been a huge fan of Seth Godin's posts. For me, they are the perfect examples of how your posts should be. "precisely concise". It ensures that your posts are read & you invoke the readers to think. If they want to know more, comment are left & then there could be further engagement.

So what do you think - hopefully the above will help you stay above the "noise". Do comment, I do engage with my readers :-)

You can leave your comment either here on the blog or my Facebook Page or Google+ or just Tweet me.

(Image Courtesy: FreeDigitalPhotos.net - Renjith Krishnan, Danilo Rizzuti)

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