Here’s a prior infographic I find interesting:

Source: Accounting Degree Online

So, which blogging platform do you choose? Should you go with conventional wisdom and choose a well-established platform such as WordPress? Or should you try your hand at microblogging revelations such as Tumblr. Clearly, there’s no one size fits all approach to choosing the optimal blogging platform.

Where to blog

In this post, I compare some of the most popular blogging platforms to help my readers take a well-educated decision on which blogging platform to choose.

WordPress

What Facebook is to social media, WordPress is to the world of blogging. It’s a been-there-done-that player in the blogging arena. Unlike many other blogging platforms which are publicly hosted on the Internet, WordPress offers a self-hosting mode as well. Here’s a quick run-down of WordPress pros and cons.

Advantages

• Choice of self-hosting & easy to customize
• Easy to install and a thriving developer and support community
• Tons of custom themes to choose from
• Robust Anti-spam capabilities

Disadvantages

• Irritating advertisements (free version)
• Plugins can be a tricky business
• Requires technical know-how (self-hosted version)

Blogger

Another veteran player in the blogging arena – Blogger is now owned and backed by Google.  Here’s a quick run-down of Blogger pros & cons.

Advantages

• Fits well in Google Ecosystem
• Free as in beer
• Good support for customization

Disadvantages

• Poor SEO support
• No self-hosted version

Tumblr

Tumblr is widely perceived as an optimal blogging platform for micro-blogging aka quick blogging. It’s advisable to use Tumblr when you need a short form blogging that integrates social media elements – the idea is to quickly share and spread content among users.

Advantages

• Short and Sweet blogging
• Third-party tool support
• Free
• Integrates well with Google Analytics

Disadvantages

• Archiving is a pain
• No support for comments
• No support for RSS feeds

Typepad

Typepad blogging platform has gained acceptance among creatives, industry leaders and businesses.

Advantages

• Offers a domain name
• Customized designs
• Personal support
• Good integration with Facebook

Disadvantages

• Subscription is mandatory
• Fringe player

There are other several noticeable players in the blogging arena including Moveable Type, Drupal, Live Journal, Xanga – each catering to a specific niche. All in all, the answer to the crucial question – “Where to blog” should be determined by individual needs, target audience, budget and integration with other social networks.

What’s your favorite blogging platform? Please share your opinion on where to blog by leaving a comment.

Source: Flowtown

Turn on the news and this becomes old news pretty quickly. From claims of class warfare to desires for a fairer banking system, the arguments cloud up the air waves pretty quickly. Interspersed between the arrests, the chants and the calls for action are examples of individuals affected and unaffected by the crisis.

To me, the Occupy Wall Street movement is merely a nation realizing that its finally sick from something, and whether you’re conservative or liberal or something else, there is a problem for just about everyone and their special interests and a solution for what they want to fix. At the bottom of the barrel of complaints however, its just one thing: business.

We all know that social media is part of that business, but what you may not know about business is that it takes the element of transaction to a higher level. Read on to see what Wall Street can learn from Social Media.

1. It Helps to be Transparent

Regardless of whether you believe in personal responsibility when it comes to major purchases, it is up to the business to be accountable for what they sell. If you’re going to instate a fee, it always helps to let your customers know why and the justification, just as you would let your followers on social media know what is going on with your business.

2. Business is All About Relationships

This adage is as old as any, yet has been misrepresented in today’s world. Jobs have been shipped overseas, people laid off due to their age/cost to employ and not their skills and bottom line overemphasized. Wall Street needs to realize, as social media managers know, that relationships matter in the short and long run and generate revenues that go beyond the wallet – they generate what folks forty to sixty years ago called loyalty.

3. The World is a Community

Community is a word thrown around on social media to describe followers and friends of a particular brand. Inside a community, there is collaboration, communication and a harnessing of similar values. In America, I have no doubt that people are trying to harness the same type of activity, from the teacher trying to make sure their students understand that math concept to the businessman trying to sell a product worthy of a purchase to the small business owner hiring the High School student so the student could learn what it is like to work.

In a world and country where people for the most just want to be able to put food on the table and watch their television before they go to bed amongst their community, all they want Wall Street to understand is that they should be part of that community too. A community that collaborates, communicates and takes on the values of small town America, not that where prices are manipulated and financial figures are made obscure.

4. It Helps to Engage

Social media managers and users will tell you that an experience is made much better when users engage and create that experience that’s unrivaled. So far until now, Wall Street has shown itself to largely unresponsive, leaving the work up the police to arrest and detain protestors. Engaging and at least understanding that people may be angry is the least Wall Street folks can do to get protestors to acknowledge that there is some understanding somewhere. The same goes for the Obama administration.

Are there any other tenets of social media that Wall Street can learn from. Share them in the comments below.

Author’s blog.

While there’s no doubt that mobile marketing is a powerful tool for marketers, I strongly believe that they need to avoid these 7 don’ts.

Multiple Bulk SMS

I have no qualms in accepting that despite being a marketer, I hate receiving multiple bulk messages about any campaign – it’s irritating to say the least. While bulk SMS is an effective tool, it must be used diligently rather than flooding users with unsolicited messages.

Long Messages

Mobile users have a short attention span. Whether it’s mobile websites or texts, cell phone users typically like the information to be short, sweet and to the point. Avoid using long messages and understand that there’s no point beating about the bush.

Respect User’s Privacy

Make your mobile marketing campaign’s policy clear to the target audience and make sure you do not infringe their privacy. I, for one, would not appreciate unsolicited calls without a prior confirmation via text and/or email. Avoid calling/ texting at odd hours.

It’s all about clicks

A lot of mobile marketers are merely concerned about click rates and impressions. While clicks are important, a mobile marketing campaign needs to account for several other key metrics including location, device types etc.

One size fits all

While smartphones and tablets are used by people of all age groups, it’s unwise to target them all using a one size fits all mobile marketing campaign. Have a well-defined strategy for each segment – kids, teens, adults and even baby boomers as part of your mobile marketing strategy.

No website optimization for mobile

Unless you take care to ensure that you website is optimized for mobile access, customers and prospects are going to have a harrowing time using it. A website is your identity in the online world and if people find it difficult to use it on their mobile devices, it’s bound to leave a bad impression for your mobile marketing campaign.

Don’t overdo it

I’ve come across a number of mobile marketing campaigns go wrong because they overdid it. In fact, mobile is such an effective media that a number of marketers don’t know where to draw the line. If you over do it, it ruins your mobile marketing campaign altogether.

What’s your take on the dos and don’ts of mobile marketing? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

And when Apple announced a special event to “reinvent the future of digital publishing”, I could sense what was coming. There was a tremendous sense of anticipation for Apple’s publishing event yesterday and based on whatever I’ve seen of iBooks 2 and the iBooks Author tool, I have to say the Cupertino giant hasn’t disappointed.

The Problem (Students)

There’s no doubt that a book is a man’s best companion. It’s an incredible source of knowledge and information. Though paper books have been around since decades, they suffer from the following major limitations –

• No portability
• No durability
• No interactivity
• No searchability
• Obsolete content

The Problem (Book Creators)

Though digital publishing has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, it’s still a tedious process for book creators as it requires specialized tools and a substantial learning curve. To make matters worse, there’s no universally accepted format for digital publishing and creating a digital eBook for each platform is a daunting task.

What is the iBooks Author?

Simply put, the iBooks Author is an Apple-developed app, available as a free download from the Mac App Store, (ideally) makes it easy to make books for the iPad. The idea is to let educators and smaller publishers to create their own books for inclusion in the iBookstore and the best part – it isn’t limited to textbooks, you can create cookbook, travel book, story book, history book, or more.

How do you sign up?

To use iBooks Author, you need to have an iTunes account with a current credit card on file. As with apps, Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all sales, so it mandates having a U.S. Tax ID as part of the iTunes Connect sign-up and authentication process.

The Advantages 

Schools and colleges are using iPads as a norm rather than an exception these days. Given the widespread penetration of the iPads, the new interactive experience provided by iBooks 2 and the do-it-yourself functionality offered by iBooks Author, Apple’s done a great job of providing an end to end solution for the educational segment.

Moreover, for educators who are familiar with iWorks, using iBooks Author would be a natural learning curve. Additionally, it provides flexibility to format/ customize your book using a WYSIWIG interface or by directly editing HTML5 or JavaScript.

The Disadvantages 

The only major disadvantage of Apple iBooks Author is that it’s a proprietary tool. Apple holds an envious position in the education segment and it’s clearly trying to encourage writers and publishers to go all-in on its platform. The problem – books published using the iBooks Author won’t work on Android tablets and in a sense, it’s still not a cross-platform run-it-anywhere solution.

What’s your take on the iBooks Author platform? Do you think it will prove to be a disruptive technology for the publishing industry? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

Source: Online Schools

On its part, Google says that the motivation of including Google+ in search was to “transform Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” So, essentially Google+ data as part your Google searches is Google Search Plus. The idea of Search Plus is in-line with Google’s long-term vision to personalize your results by including more Google+ profiles, business pages, posts, and Google+ and Picasa Photos.

While some of the criticism around Google Search Plus is understandable, we should realize there’s no looking back and therefore I’ll focus on how your business can leverage Google Search Plus.

How does Google Search Plus work?

Google Search plus Your World results will introduce the following 3 categories of results – personal results, profiles in search, and profiles and pages. Personal results include data from your own Google+ photos and posts, as well as any sharable Google+ data from people in your circles including non-public Google+ photos and posts that were shared with you or posts you shared with a select group of people.

From an individual perspective, there’s definitely some amount of learning curve required to understand how Google Search Plus works and what public/ non-public data would be show up in search results.

Platform

Google has always maintained that Google+ is not a social network. On the contrary, it’s always projected itself as a platform. As I mentioned back then, I’ve strong admiration for Google as a technology company mainly because of its robust and scalable ecosystem. Google was never a search-only company, instead it focused on building a platform and search was just the first, and one piece of the whole puzzle. It’s understandable that Google is now bringing all its ecosystem goodness to Google+ in the form of Google Apps, Hangouts and the newly introduced Google+ updates in search results.

IMO, Google Search Plus is just the beginning of Google’s broader plan to integrate search, social media and SEO. From a business perspective, it opens up a new opportunity to leverage Google+ profiles for search as well as SEO.

SEO Factor

SEO is a key consideration for businesses. Google’s own services have always ranked high in search and SEO. These include Google Checkout, Google Book Search, Google Maps etc. With Google Search Plus, Google is now bringing Google+ into the SEO and Page Rank game. While Google hasn’t disclosed the algorithmic details, one thing’s for sure – popular Google+ profiles can help businesses up their SEO rankings.

Customer Perspective

It’s an encouraging sign for businesses that several customers have actually found Google Search Plus to be useful to see if someone in their circles searched for the same stuff. If that’s products or services which they recently bought, it shows up in the search results and this would help businesses with passive promotion.

The best part – if people don’t like Google Search Plus, they can turn it off so it’s not like Facebook enforcing you to follow its mindless privacy changes.

Of course, it’s still early days. Despite all the criticism, I see plenty of business positives of Google Search Plus. What about you? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

Click image to enlarge

Source: H&R Block

And now, Twitter is being hailed as a lifesaver. As per Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Twitter has serious potential to emerge as a modern age lifesaver by providing important health-related information to people during emergencies.

Researchers say Twitter users actively share vital information about cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillators (AEDs) and they frequently discuss this topic as part of tweets and DMs. There’s no doubt that Twitter is a leading avenue to respond to queries from the public and disseminate information and that’s how patients are now leveraging it in particularly in the areas of CPR training and lifesaving interventions such as therapeutic hypothermia.

Though it would be a long shot to call Twitter a lifesaver but I genuinely believe that Twitter is perhaps the well-suited social network to cater to such medical emergencies and here’s why.

Stats

Researchers say they’ve found 15,324 tweets involving cardiac arrest specific information. Out of these, 14 per cent referenced cardiac arrest events, with five per cent of those messages relating personal experiences with the condition and nine per cent representing users sharing information relating to arrest locations and treatment interventions and guidelines.

Quick & Meaningful

I’ve often said that Twitter thrives on simplicity. It’s a no non-sense social network where quick dispersal of information is all what matters. The 140 character limit enforces users to be meaningful in their conversations and that’s precisely what’s needed in medical emergencies. In fact, when it comes to real time information dispersal, Twitter ranks well ahead of Facebook and Google+.

Easy Access

As opposed to Facebook, Twitter provides multimodal access – there are tons of desktop as well as mobile apps which you can use. In contrast, other social networks are either limited to the web or offer only a handful of mobile apps.

Audience

Twitter isn’t glamorous like Facebook and entertaining like Google+. On the contrary, it’s all about the content (real time information) and how to best disseminate it effectively to a wider audience. Based on experience, I can safely bet that my Twitter audience on the whole is more mature than my followers on any other social network. In that context, I believe that Twitter is well-suited for such critical conditions.

Do you believe Twitter has the potential to emerge as a lifesaver? Or is it just another social network with little to offer for such emergency situations and why? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

In this post, we talk about the underlying principle behind marketing, the need and the means. We’ll make a conscious effort to stay away from technical jargon and uncover digital marketing in simple and easy to understand terms.

What is Marketing?

I’ve come across people who say marketing is an art. Others claim marketing is a methodical science which works on definite logic and consumer behavior patterns. Wikipedia defines marketing as the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. It’s a process which creates and delivers value to the customer.

I defined marketing as an approach to promoting products and services. I won’t say it’s an art because art seldom follows logic. I won’t categorize it as a science as I strongly believe marketing is all about going beyond the obvious. To me, any activity that helps a business add value to the overall customer experience is marketing.

Means

We often hear the term traditional marketing. It essentially represents channels such as TV, radio, print media etc. Though traditional marketing ruled the roost for decades, the explosive growth of Internet has meant that businesses can no longer rely solely on such methods. The World Wide Web and social media have unleashed a new generation of marketing – aka digital marketing upon us. These typically include applications such as web, email, IM, RSS, video which can be leveraged by marketers to launch campaigns. The explosive growth of smartphones and tablets has meant that mobile has emerged as a widely accepted digital marketing channel in recent times.

End

The end goal of any marketing campaign is to meet the needs and wants of customers. It’s all about understanding your customers and coming up with innovative means to provide products and services to serve them better. A great product isn’t great until it is desirable to customers and that’s the fundamental principle that rules the marketing world.

People often ask me if marketing is all about tactics and strategies. That’s natural because people tend to associate marketing with tactics, partly because they’re fun. Similarly, strategies sound business-oriented and hence it’s often used as a misnomer. In my opinion, marketing covers a broader gamut which includes planning, tactics, strategy, execution and most importantly monitoring.

How would you define marketing in layman terms? Please share your marketing definition by leaving a comment.

2011 was a phenomenal year for the smedio community as we established ourselves as a formidable force in the social media segment. We received a lot of healthy feedback from our users and several new members emphasized the need for us to get down to the basics of social media and digital marketing.

Therefore, we begin the New Year with an introductory post on what is digital marketing. We talk about the underlying principle behind digital marketing, the means, the end and the ongoing evolution from a business as well as marketer’s perspective. We’ll make a conscious effort to stay away from technical jargon and uncover digital marketing in simple and easy to understand terms.

What is Digital Marketing?

I usually refrain from using textbook definitions as I believe they are good to memorize but offer little insights. To me, digital marketing is using techniques which allow a marketer to use the best of both worlds – digital and marketing. While the basic principles of marketing still apply, digital marketing isn’t just another new channel for marketing. On the contrary, it’s a refreshingly new approach to marketing which offers a unique understanding of consumer behavior.

What is NOT Digital Marketing?

To understand what digital marketing techniques are, it’s easier to classify what doesn’t constitute digital marketing. Traditional marketing channels such as print, radio, TV and billboards aren’t forms of digital marketing. These channels have been mighty successful over a long period of time but they aren’t as effective in today’s modern age.

I believe that traditional marketing channels suffer from 2 major limitations – one-way communication and no real time feedback. As a veteran marketer, I’ve always believed that marketing is a 2-way street. Unfortunately, traditional marketing channels aren’t conductive to dialogue between the marketer and the customer. Secondly, the rapid explosion of Internet and social media has meant that ‘real time’ communication is key. Most traditional marketing channels suffer from a lag and there’s no instantaneous communication.

While traditional marketing is all about impressions, digital marketing focuses on the more important aspect of creating an experience for users.

Digital Marketing Channels

In a broader sense, the Internet is the heart of digital marketing. The Internet offers several applications such as web, email, IM, RSS, video which can be leveraged by marketers to launch campaigns. The explosive growth of smartphones and tablets has meant that mobile has emerged as a widely accepted digital marketing channel in recent times.

And last but not the least, social media has been a great ambassador to the cause of digital marketing. While the primary motivation for social networks was in-person interaction, leading social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have transformed into valuable digital marketing tools.

This last holiday season Google took the cake with its Google+ ad campaign featuring The Muppets singing a popular classic rock number on Google + Hangouts. Most people would wonder that TV ads are by all means traditional advertising, so why I do refer to it as a classic example for digital marketing. Here’s why!

What’s the Muppets Campaign All About?

The new TV ad shows the Muppets jamming to the popular Queen and David Bowie song, Under Pressure. In fact, this isn’t Google’s first collaboration by the Muppets – the online search giant used America’s favorite television icons to build a Google Doodle to mark Jim Henson’s 75th birthday.

Strategy

Google+ Hangouts are all about video and what better than video ads to advertise it. It’s believed that Muppets are a part of Google culture. The Muppets are a common sight at Googleplex and Google’s first employee Craig Silverstein served as the founder of the Internet group  rec.arts.henson+muppets. Google recent revamped Hangouts and to promote it, the online search giant shot an introductory Hangout with the Muppets and the human actors in the movie. Given Google’s past success with similar advertisements, the online search giant has a long term strategy to utilize Muppets for its marketing campaigns.

The Muppets aren’t merely likeable characters in the ad; they represent internal culture within the company around Muppet history and humor. I’ve watched the ad few times and I must say – it’s one of the most high impact advertisements of recent times.

Future

Google is known to be a futuristic company. It knows Hangouts are one of the USPs of Google+ as compared to Facebook. Though Google+ started off on a promising note, it’s lost some of its sting in the last few months. The popularity of Hangouts might well be crucial factor in determining Google+ adoption in the enterprise so it’s understandable that Google has focused all its marketing might there.

So, don’t be surprised if a Muppet joins your next Google Hangout. It’s all a part of the marketing plan!

Did you like the Google+ Holiday commercials with the Muppets? Do you think it will help promote Google+ adoption among the masses? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

1. Mobile will be mandatory

Till date, mobile has been a nice-to-have/ wishlist medium for most digital marketers. I reckon mobile (smartphones and tablets) will no longer be an optional channel for digital marketing next year. On the contrary, digital marketers will use the best of both worlds – native apps and mobile/ hybrid websites to enable anytime anywhere connectivity for prospects.

2. Personalization

Social networks are already beginning to offer personalized content based on user preferences. Further, they allow users to filter content as per their preferences. I anticipate digital marketers to leverage personalization big time in order to create innovative marketing campaigns according to user tastes.

3. Location

2011 was a year of consolidation for the location-based services. Foursquare and Gowalla joined hands, Facebook continued Facebook Places while Google acquired a couple of niche startups in the location discovery segment. I expect location based services to be digital marketer’s best friend next year to make suggestions about where you should eat, drink, play etc.

4. Video

Google+ Hangouts introduced the much needed innovation in the video communication segment this year. With continuous advancements in video technology, I would expect Video to be major force for digital marketers to create interactive viral web content. Tools such as Google+ Hangouts will offer the much need face-to-face communication channel for digital marketers.

5. On Demand

The line between Television and Internet-based video content is blurring first. It’s been a good year for on-demand video providers such as Netflix and Hulu and I believe they would emerge as an effective channel for digital marketers in future.

6. Publishing

The Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle Fire will change the face of the digital publishing for good. This would further open up a new window of opportunity for marketers to reach out to audiences through digital marketing campaigns.

7. Platform

I believe full-fledged ecosystems and platforms will fast replace individual applications as digital marketer’s preferred tools. Google is already leveraging its existing ecosystem to transform Google+ from a social network to a platform. I would expect Facebook to do the same using third-party apps and Facebook Connect. Such platforms would offer an end-to-end solution for digital marketers.

What changes do you expect in the digital marketing arena in the New Year? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.

Though Facebook Pages were well received in the business world, they suffered from one major flaw which has kind of become synonymous with Facebook – poor privacy management. One of the biggest limitations was the lack of a private messaging feature for Facebook Pages. Unfortunately, a number of Facebook users exploited this limitation to post negative feedback on specific Brand Facebook Pages.

The solution to this problem – introduce a private message mechanism to enable to direct communication between brands and customers, much like Twitter’s Direct Messages. The good thing – Facebook has already started rolling out this feature to select business users in Asia and it’s expected to be available globally later this month.

I strongly believe that private messaging can be highly effective for Facebook Pages as it solves a number of major issues

Unsolicited Messages

If you don’t enforce control, it’s likely to lead to a large number of unsolicited messages and spamming and that’s precisely what’s happened with Facebook pages till date.

Privacy

The other problem with public messages, of course, is that there is no privacy. Users visiting a Facebook Page can inadvertently view profiles of other fans.

How does it work?

Businesses can’t initiate private conversations with users; they can only respond to a direct message or to a user’s public post on their page. Though users can initiate conversations, businesses can respond as many times as they like after initial contact is made.

Here’s how your business can effectively leverage Facebook’s Private Messaging feature.

Customer Service

Direct communication is a key to effective customer service and Facebook’s new introduced private messaging service will help brands reach out to users while maintaining their confidentiality. It lends a much-needed personal touch as well.

Feedback

Private messaging offers the benefit of allowing brands to more discretely address customer feedback. The move facilitates more direct interaction between brands and users.

All in all, a much needed feature for Facebook Pages. What do you think of Facebook’s move to introduce private messages for Pages? Can it match Twitter’s Direct Messages in popularity? Please share your opinion by leaving a comment.