Pareto Principal in Social Media Marketing !

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients”.

From my personal experience I can suggest that the 80-20 thumb rule applies for social media marketing as well.  We can certainly state that very small portion of effort is attributed to the leads .But irony is we don’t know which part of effort works ,hence we don’t have much choice left ,except keep trying to maximize the probability of the desired output to get realized.

Following are two thumb rules which are very useful in social media marketing:

1. 80% of the time, you should be sharing non-promotional content. The other 20% of time, promote your brand. 

2. 80 % of your Social Media Marketing time, should be spent in listening. The other 20% of time, open your mouth.  

Rising Significance of B2B portals in Downturns!

By Vinaytosh Mishra

B2B Marketing has always been about networking. In recent years means of networking has changed significantly. During slow downs firms must test new strategies and tactics to improve marketing effectiveness and reduce the cost. Businesses need to maintain agility and adapt to an evolving marketplace, but cannot sacrifice tried-and-true tactics that have driven their lead generation programs for years. 

Recent studies by firms like Marketing Sherpa indicate that marketers are investing in tried-and-true tactics such as trade shows, website marketing and email, and are allocating the greatest slices of their budgets to these tactics.

Trade shows have claimed the greatest percentage of marketing budget allocation in year 2011, with its greatest supporters being large organizations. On average, organizations of this size invest a third of the marketing budget to trade shows. 

As the use of tablets, e-readers and smart phones increase, and more print publications add online services to readership, organizations in the media or publishing sector are prioritizing websites with the greatest average budget allocation of 22%. The B2B Portals like Alibaba.com, NetworkToday.com, and IndiaMART etc are increasingly becoming the starting point of information search in case of B2B marketers. There are many other B2B Communities portals which are operated by community as non profit organization but they most lack the cohesiveness provided by B2B portals operated by companies.  

Image: portalpattern.org

Prioritizing tasks is an absolute must for SEO!

By Vinaytosh Mishra

Some people prefer working early in morning while some like burning mid night oil. When are you the most productive during the day? Instead of trying to swim against tide try to flow freely with time .Getting into a verbal argument with clock is certainly not a good idea.

I personally hate driving and consider myself more than a driver (no offense to auto geeks).And spend time during travel in thinking about the posts and planning other things. I note down the points on gazettes or simply on a piece of paper. This exercise saves a lot of time of mine.  

I make it a priority to get the articles completed before going to bed. Prioritizing tasks is an absolute must. 

Prioritizing SEO Tasks:

 

Now that we have identified our most productive time during the day the next step is to prioritize our tasks. First create a list of everything that needs to be completed; you can do this on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. What tasks need to be completed and what amount of time and effort will be needed in order to satisfy the requirements? After prioritizing each task you need to fit it into your schedule. 

This post was written by Vinaytosh Mishra for Web Bazaar. To view similar post log on to http://www.webbazaar.com/blog.

The Best Way To Use Wikipedia To Promote Your Small Business:Tips by Linchpin SEO

Wikipedia articles rank high in search results for keywords,yet this medium is only partially utilized.The main reason for this strange phenomena is prevalence of unskilled copy writers.The SEO operations of most of the companies is outsourced and vendors(in pursuit of profit maximization)  rely on low skilled data entry operators for content creation and online PR Management.Wikipedia requires high quality articles with reliable references.I came across a nicely written blog post on blog of a digital agency Linchpin SEO.I would like to share some of their tips on use of Wikipedia for Small and Medium Businesses.

Wikipedia, the popular community-edited website, is not considered a reliable source of information when writing papers or fact-checking information. Most believe that because anyone can create and edit the information on the site, the information can easily be biased and/or inaccurate. But that doesn’t mean that Wikipedia doesn’t provide value, especially when it comes to promoting your business.

Every article, or “page,” on Wikipedia is required to have a list of cited sources at the end of the page. These sources are cited in-text, allowing the reader to see the source of the information provided. And this is precisely how small businesses can spread their content they have written and marketing their small business. While the links are “no follow,” meaning that they don’t really count toward link-building in the eyes of the search engines, having your research article listed as a cite, with a link to the content is valuable.

While Wikipedia is community-edited, the community can be fickle about what is and is not acceptable for citing. As such, a business owner cannot simply write a research article, find a corresponding Wikipedia page, and post a link to their content. The following guidelines will help you use Wikipedia to promote your content and establish your credibility online:

Become A Contributor:

Wikipedia is more time consuming than other means of article promotion. This is because the community has its own specific style guide that must be strictly adhered to, or the links will be removed. Take a half hour, or an hour, and familiarize yourself with the Wikipedia style and code. Edit a few articles about topics in which you care, so you can see how the user interface works.

Add Meaningful Information:

As mentioned earlier, it is not enough to just add a link to content that supports information that already exists in the article. Rather, the editing community at Wikipedia expects that something new will be added to the information in the article, with your link to your business article as the citation. The easiest way to add new information is to read the Wikipedia article, find one or two bits of information that you supply in your business article that aren’t in the Wikipedia page, and add those to the page. This may be as little as one or two sentences, or as much as a paragraph. Just make sure to add an in-text citation with the link back to your information on your site.

Use Credible, High-Authority Sources:

When the Wikipedia editing community looks through new additions to pages, they want to see that the newly added information and link is high quality. Make sure that you list at least three resources to .edu and .gov sites at the end of your research article to support your research or business findings. Also, cite sources within the body of the business article whenever it makes sense. This is as easy as saying something like, 

“According to a 2010 report issued by the Department of Health and Human Services…” This tells readers you have done the research that backs up the information in your page. In return, this also demonstrates to the Wikipedia community that the research you linked to has supporting documentation, and indeed adds value for their readers.

These suggestions will help you establish links and credibility on one of the most read websites in the world. While citing your content on Wikipedia takes more effort and time than promoting on social networks or commenting on blogs, the value over time is strong and worth the time. Combining several of the promotion techniques is the best way to get the most from every piece of content you publish.

Good Product Manager Vs Bad Product Manager!

People always accuse me for getting involved too much with product. I want to know basic of every component of product development before suggesting improvement in other’s work. Moreover, I would always wish that my team respect me for my domain knowledge and not for position, i am holding. I recently came across a post on goodproductmanager.com  and would love to share experts from the post, which mostly endorse my ideas on product management. I hope you will find the post useful. Let me know your inputs through comment section.

If you want to be a bad product manager, have someone else do the dirty work for you. You’re important (your title includes “manager,” after all) and you’ve got important things to do, like go to meetings and create presentations. You can’t be bothered with doing the “little things” like following up on customer questions, maintaining communication with partners, or interfacing with all the different functions within your company.

If you want to be a good product manager, be comfortable getting involved in all aspects of your product. Ignoring issues which demand further scrutiny is a sure-fire way to miss important details, hurt your credibility among the product development team and other internal stakeholders, and reduce your overall effectiveness as a product manager.

Product managers should know how to and spend time with activities like:

• Follow up with a customer after a salesperson reports a customer complaint during a sales call
• Getting to the root cause of strange problems being reported by customer support
• Working out details of the implications of product plans with internal groups like finance, legal, and sales operations
• Conducting customer interviews personally (as opposed to delegating this to other internal or external resources)

Often product managers do not get involved in these activities because either they do not know how to do them, are not comfortable doing them, believe that their other duties are more important, or feel though they are “above” doing some of these activities.

This is not to say that a product manager should be involved in all of the “none of the above” tasks at all times. Often, product managers fail because they are perceived as the person who should do all of the miscellaneous work, or they spend too much time in tactical responsibilities rather than delegating those. However, product managers should get involved in some details from time to time for a number of reasons:

1. It will help you identify things related to the product which you would not find out if someone else carried out the task. Yes, a customer service representative can follow up with a major customer to find out more details about the error they received, and they will do a good job of it — but they may only be focused on identifying more out about the error and when it occurred. If you follow up, you will (should) also probe more to learn the scenario which led to the customer performing the task which caused the error, how often that customer performs that task, the broader scenario surrounding that task, the value your product provides by solving the customer need, and a long list of other information which you would not have learned by delegating the follow-up to someone else.
2. It will give you credibility with your colleagues. There is nothing which turns off colleagues more than responding to a request they feel is completely reasonable with a response that you do not have time for their request, that their request is not important, or that the request is “not my job.” Implying that you are “too good” to do something (but your colleague is not) is a recipe for disaster for product managers, whose success depends on influencing people over whom they do not have authority. When you can go the extra mile and help them out with a problem, show them that their request is important, act courtesly and respectfully, and finish what you started in a timely fashion, your colleague will be more than willing to return the favor at some point in the future. (Bonus points if you genuinely thank them for the opportunity to get involved and for their assistance along the way.)
3. It will help make you a better product manager by teaching you about other areas of the business. By “rolling up your sleeves” and diving into different areas within your organization, you will make yourself more knowledgeable about the overall operations of your company and about the various aspects of business in general. The more you learn about the manufacturing operations, the supply chain, the CRM system, or the human resources policies (yes, even HR), the more well-rounded you will become, making you a more valuable product manager for your organization and a more marketable product manager overall.

Finding the right balance is important — too much time spent in the details will take time and attention away from important strategic responsibilities, though avoiding all of the details will shield you from important information which can help enlighten your strategic responsibilities. Product managers who are comfortable getting involved in all aspects of their product and can devote the right amount of time to these details will undoubtedly be more valuable and successful product managers in the long run.