p2w2 blog

Free ebook: 7 Great Tools for Internet Marketing

Iswarya — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:43:53 +0000

We are giving away a free eBook!

Our free eBook 7 Great Tools for Internet Marketing is now available for download. This is the first in the series of free eBooks that we will be publishing regularly. Keep watching this space for more surprises!

Download: 7 Great Tools for Internet Marketing

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Managing Your Daily Tasks

Iswarya — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:15:13 +0000

Let me ask you a question. How often has any of the following thoughts occurred to you?

“I seriously don’t have enough time!”

“Oh no, how could I forget that task?”

“How am I expected to manage SO many things at once?”

Roughly, atleast once a day huh? It used to happen to me, too. Being a part of a small business means that you will naturally have a hundred things on your mind. And when you can’t manage all your tasks and responsibilities, it’s guaranteed chaos.

So it was only recently that I discovered the value of a little something called ‘To-Do lists.’ It’s a simple enough concept, (and quite an obvious one, if you think about it) but so often, most of us fail to do it.

All you need to do is spend some time, as soon as you come to work/school (that’s right - do not check email the first thing in the morning!) to think about your day/week ahead. Trust me, you will realize soon enough that those 15 minutes are not a waste of time!

Use some trusted system to jot down your notes and lists – something that you will keep looking at an ongoing basis. This way, you do not need to bother about losing out on doing any important tasks, because you will keep going back to that system regularly. A pencil and scratchpad would do just fine, as long as you’re comfortable with it. (P.S: I recently started using Microsoft’s One Note and I’ve become a huge fan ever since). This way you can also link it to your calendar to mark tasks that need to be delivered by a particular time. Tip: Use that system to also jot down ideas that occur to you while you are working.

Always write down ‘actionable items’ in your list. For instance lets say your task for the day is to “Finish project X”. What would be the first thing you would do to finish Project X that day? Call Bob? Go to Google? Run down to the library for a reference book? Whatever it is, write that Step 1 down. Makes your job a whole lot organized.

Do you have any special tips to manage your daily routine? Do let us know!

How to Plan a Business Trip – Part II

Iswarya — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:22:56 +0000

I wrote a post sometime back on how to plan a business trip. I had mentioned in passing that I would soon be writing a post that dealt with how to plan various events to attend during the course of the trip. So how do you really go places(excuse the mild pun) during a business trip?

1. Have a clear objective as to what are the type of people you need to be meeting with. Depending on that you need to choose your target locations and events.These can be networking events, seminars, conferences, referral meetings, unconferences, informal meetups, etc.

2. Plan in advance. Search for events in the cities which you are going to be visting. Some good resources include Meetup, Eventbrite, Upcoming, LinkedIn Events, Gary’s Guide, etc. From our personal experience, I would definitely recommend Meetup. It’s an excellent resource.

3. When you send out your RSVPs, try to coordinate with the organizers of the event beforehand. This can be handy if you wish to make a presentation or a talk at a networking event, for instance.

4. Make sure you have just the right number of events lined up for a day. Time is a valuable resource when you are on a trip, but you don’t want to wear yourself out either. Also, you need to plan it right in order to meet up with existing clients, because hey, they are as much important(if not more) as prospects!

5. Lastly, a few pointers – give out business cards, be on time, be polite and listen to what others say. Request for 1-1 meetings and follow up with people.

Check out Chaitanya’s post on OpenForum to know more about how to make networking and referral events work for you. Do you have any interesting pointers from your own business trip experiences? Let us know!

Protected: Webinar Video – 14th July 2010

Ravi Kiran — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:15:25 +0000

A Useful Fix for Duplicate Content Issues

Iswarya — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:16:57 +0000

I recently came across the concept of canonical URLs. It’s a useful fix for duplicate content issues within your site.

Say you have two different versions of the same web page, with very similar content. Maybe you use one of them is actually present in the navigation links in your website and the other is a landing page for your PPC ads. But obviously you wouldn’t want your page rankings and other metrics to be split between those two. An easy solution for this is to mark the “more important” page as a “canonical page” . According to the definition in Google Webmaster Tools Help , “a canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.”

So how do you mark a page as canonical?

It’s very simple, very similar to the concept of nofollow blogs. Lets consider the example I gave before. You have two similar pages in your website, one is an actual page in the website and another is a duplicate you use for PPC ads.

http://sample.com/website_page.php

http://sample.com/landing_ads.php

In this case, the more important page of the two is obviously “website_page.php”. So within the HTML code of “landing_ads.php”, all you have to do is add the following code in the section:

When the search engine spider is crawling “landing_ads.php”, the canonical tag will instruct the spider that this page is simply a copy of “website_page.php”and that whatever backlinks or traffic metrics this page has should point back to the “preferred page”, or in our case, “website_page.php”.

Technically, this seems similar to a 301 redirect, though there are subtle differences in the way both work. A canonical tag is mainly for the benefit of a search engine, as opposed to a redirect which is intended for end users. There’s a good SEOmoz article in that explains this concept very well.

Are there some more useful other on-page optimization practices that you follow for your site? Do let us know in the comments section!