Proprietary Presence Vs Social Presence

Recently, I did a close comparison between proprietary tools  and Social Tools available. Now this might sound little confusing. Let me clear this fact. Proprietary tools means having your own site and having your own social features available on your site such as Hindustan Lever having Blogging, Video sharing and community features on their site. In this way they think they can grab the same amount of users to their website, just like all other popular tools available such as Facebook, Orkut, You tube, WordPress, Blogger etc.  The logic behind this is great, but it does not work at all. Many clients featuring all these possibilities on their site anticipate tremendous traffic to their site. But this is not the fact at all. It never works like that.   The clear difference is Proprietor y presence does not have the general identity which other social tools have. Its like knowing a company’s website and knowing yahoo.com. Yahoo is considered to be a landmark, anything published on it has a global reach. So the presence can be considered as a landmark. It also depends what kind of approach Yahoo had towards users and what they offered. Most of the people are glued to this presence.

Recently, I had a chat with one of my client who thinks that they had provided all necessary social platforms on their site and does not feel the need of using other popular social media presence to add more traffic to their site.  Well I don’t see any clear reason to why one should not use other Social Media platforms. In fact, my recommendation would be not spending any money building Social features on an individual company site and use other popular social platforms to drive the traffic to the site. Users want to meet up at a common place. There are 1000’s of places where people discuss and meet online. Yes.. But a website is compulsory….. there cannot be any replacement to it.

A simple example :

Knowing a destination like Gateway of India and knowing an address of a Corporate office, are two different things.  Even if a corporate office has everything as Gateway of India has, people will still go for Gateway of India, because everybody knows about it from ages. It is a Landmark !

Similarly, it is just not advisable to maintain proprietary tools and expect tons of traffic to their site. One must have a clear and a strong presence on general online presence, because they are already established and people have accepted it, because the motive behind is to just connect people and not promote an individual business. Whereas, a proprietary online presence is focused to only promote and talk about specific business. Though a proprietary presence may have tons of traffic, but there is no credibility of the traffic. Most of the traffic is driven through Google Ads, Search Engine techniques and it is been rated on the statistics. Nowadays, statistics is not just everything. One cannot decide the credibility of the information through number of page visits. What about credibility of information, how can statistics define a particular visitor of the site is willing to know about a company’s business or their communications. But all this is possible at the available Social Tools. They are designed and developed only to know about this particular intention of a user.

Online statistics can been a good beginning to rate a website ROI, but in the long run, it fades out and the traffic depends on the quality of information and not just quantity of information

One more example:

A contestant dancing in his room and a contestant dancing on a stage has a clear and logical answer to the above disucssion. No one would go to his room and watch him, until he or she comes on a global platform.

Network, Network Network – is the only way of Marketing your Product

I sometimes do realize that we are seeing something we have already seen before, but at that time we never liked it as we always felt that it was not made for us.  I am talking about Simple Network marketing. I still remember when my friends use to call me for some interesting seminars and that use to turn out to be Amway or Quantum. I always use to runaway from these schemes of Network marketing such you become a member and then you bring 10 friends in the circle and it goes on like that. Of course,  it was one of the first concepts of Network Marketing.

We are still in the similar circle. We see so many Social Networking Sites evolving day by day getting more and more flexibility and user convenient features to add more value for interactions and conversations.

I have a very bad habit of relating every knowledge related thing to real life examples. I think that’s the way i perceive and understand it best.  As a Digital Marketing Professional i think its very important that one should always start relate these technical platforms with real life examples, because that’s how they are evolved.  All the technologies what we see in our day to day life are evolved from a human’s perspective. We want it to work that way to help in our daily needs.

Everything we see now is all evolved from our thoughts. J Just like Shivsena Shakha (Shivsena branches) having their individual networks across the state, to spread the message easily. Sorry, for Shivsena, as it is one always on our Mumbaikars mind. Just like a company having their chain of Distributors, Retailers and stockists. They do help selling the product at their individual networks.

Similarly every single human will have his own network, like me having my friends and my friends having their own friends and the chain goes on. Such a long influential network.  We have never thought like this before.

All that matters is every individual in the web network. Thanks for all these Networking Platforms which helps an individual to raise his voice, opinion across the web and also out of the web. Many times I end up debating with my friends, clients and my colleagues. We always update new figures of users who are active online. Every year we keep updating it. But we are just not talking about people who are online.

For Eg:

Say out of 100 people only 35 people are online, but one forgets that these 35 people who get influenced on web influence other remaining 75 people who are not present online, so one cannot say that Digital Marketing or online network marketing cannot drive the marketing campaigning completely. Though it might not affect the rest 75 completely but it surely affects at least 40 people out of 75.

Well its difficult sometimes to trace the people outside the internet world to find out the effect of  our marketing campaign but its so simple to understand and there is a clear logic to it.

Its just a paperless platform we are using nothing else.

Website or a Blog

This had always been a debate through out my experience in Online Marketing & Social Media Marketing. Lot of people are still amused in differentiating a Blog and a Website.

I come across  many people who always keep asking me what is a Blog, certainly they know about a website. I keep telling them, it’s just another website which is available on a shareable domain name such as yourname.wordpress.com, myname.blogspot.com.

Well to justify it. There is absolutely no difference in a website and a Blog. Both are web pages built for certain needs. The only difference is that a website can be customized in any form and then can be uploaded. But whereas, a Blog is a predefined template and can use only the defined features in it.

For new entrepreneurs, Authors, celebrities a Blog is the most ideal tool for online communication. Many clients who are authors, Celebrities do ask me for a website. But I always suggest them for a Blog. It gives all features such as uploading content, Images, Video and many more. Blogs can also be hosted on a defined domain, for further customization to make it look like exactly a website. In fact it is an easy way of launching your online Identity within minutes. Online Search Engine Optimization, formatting of the content, renaming of the images, assigning right kind of keywords, linking, interlinking etc, almost everything is possible. You can even add multiple pages to your Blog to make it look like a website. So what else one does want?

In such a competitive online world, everyone feels that an online identity is must, hence small entrepreneurs can really use this concept to spread their business across the digital space in minutes. Because the new upcoming companies will surely not have the kind of content and topics as seen in the website. Many people are still not convinced with the html page driven website or a Blog, they still feel that a flash based website is more interactive and attractive. But this is not the case any more, nowadays people look for unique and informational content. They no more feel the impact. If one observes, most of the popular sites available online are all HTML, CSS driven sites. Certainly it can attract many search engines effectively, hence also gaining a popular ranking in it. Well creating a Blog is certainly very cost effective and can be done in minutes, without worrying about time, creativity, content. This is has been the most popular concept available online.

I always think that we see it the way we perceive it. But sometimes we should see the logical aspect of it. In India, many people do think that a Blog and a website are two different things. But, it is absolutely not. I hope that all our young and upcoming entrepreneurs do realize this aspect and would identify their ready made online presence available for free. Imagine if this happens, we would achieve a breakthrough in internet communication in India, which is still lacking at times. It is certainly a very cost effective and a convenient tool to use.

But when do we start realizing?

Google Loopholes

I heard about Submitting  blogs on google blogs listing. I tried doing it and  it asked me enter code, to confirm whether i am a human or not. Well in the first case i did not understand the written alphabets, so i submitted it so that it can throw some error and it will regenerate a new code to verify. But guess what,  it accepted it. Its such a big loop hole in google Blog submissions. It accepts without confirmation. This means there is no verification taken care by google while submitting blogs.

Social Media Evolution

Social Media evolved because of Google’s new search model. I don’t know how many people in India are aware of this. I guess very few people know about it.

Even if people know about it, I would still request everybody to read it patiently as it has other connections to it.

Let me start with Search Engines. Google is the most popular & the best possible search engine available currently on internet space. There are other search engines such as yahoo, msn, ask.com but not as popular as Google.

Earlier Google used to search only WebPages & Documents. Ever since Google improved their search model, it can now start searching WebPages, PDF, Video, Audio, Images documents such as word documents, PPT, RSS feeds etc.

Now this might help you to link to my older posts. Why Social Networking, blogging, video sharing, photo sharing, social news are popular because all these are searchable in the new Google search model. And we all know that how many people rely on Google for information. Right from the product to the personality we are totally depended on Search engines.

Naturally, your profiles, videos, audio, documents can be searchable through easily. Hence Search Engine marketing such as bidding of keywords, sponsored links need not have to be taken seriously. The only important one must follow is to be present and active on these platforms in terms of Participation, conversations, updations etc. So why not take advantage of it and adopt best possible online marketing tactics

Lot of people in India does not know about how these platforms appear in Google search engine in your regular searches. Hence may not be able to connect themselves with the new media. The fact is all these Medias are so popular now that if you have a profile or a blog on any of these social media platforms, they start appearing in Google.

Now doesn’t it sound interesting?

Digital Marketing has tremendous potential in India. Provided one should be a smart marketer to understand and start using it. Especially during this recession, one needs to think smart and use this media as an advantage as it cuts down you advertising budgets drastically.

By writing these posts on Social Media in Indian Scenario, I am trying to build a connection between the traditional media and online media. So, our Indian marketers understand it quickly and are the first one to use it and create their long lasting existence.

Abroad most of the brands spend only on social media marketing and other digital Marketing methods.

My next post will talk about the current PR and advertising media and how it has been helpful to us for so long & what are their loop holes and how social media acts as a superior media to it.

Friends I am not using any technical words in all my articles just to avoid creating confusions. My articles are purely for any layman to understand how can digital media be a one stop solution for marketing and communication about their products, services, individuals, entertainment, Non government organizations, schools, Exhibitions, Logistics, Churches, Trusts, small entrepreneurs, Niche verticals, such as commodities, engineering etc.