Go Viral with "Marketing"

Viral marketing has evolved from word of mouth to a much more scientific endeavor in the online world.
Viral marketing is defined on Wikipedia as "marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses."
So how does this work into the art of Viral Publicity?
The marketing is rapidly changing. What once was an environment in which the application was practically guaranteed to go viral has shifted to one in which one need to come up with creative ways of marketing the application. Viral marketing has paved the way and has become one of the top methods used in advertising.
It’s all about positioning yourself or your message in the right place to get the highest level of publicity possible.
Now, there’s also the right time which needs to be considered. By observing what kinds of trends or things are getting publicity at any certain time, one can use them to leverage their own publicity.
Based on my previous posts and some additional thinking about the subject I’ve found that through Facebook, I can go viral. Here are some mechanisms that companies have used to successfully “go viral”.
v Email invitations
v Communication
v Submitting Articles to the blogs
v Adding and submitting applications
v Linking
v Branding
v Word of Mouth
Viral marketing can work wonders for any business, web site or product. It can be a great source of sales leads, one-way links and targeted traffic. Yet, many marketers are not taking full advantage of this 'viral factor' in their marketing efforts.
Viral marketing 'done right' can have many benefits. It will:
* increase your link popularity (often one way links)
* increase targeted traffic to your site
* build your brand recognition
* create targeted leads for your products
* automate your marketing effortsFor example, right now on Facebook one could easily use this publicity. We have seen how people have become addicted to Facebook and its working wonders. To attract the most users

Writing a blog….

You can put so many things in a blog, but what distinguishes one from the other? Is it the content, the author, the title or what? That’s not an easy one to answer; there are whole lists of things that make each one unique and interesting. Hopefully, I’ll be able to blog about things at my work place, things in my life, things to make you think, things to question what you really believe. It’s important to keep the interest alive to keep you coming back for another read, or to talk with your colleagues and friends about the things you’ve read in the blog.
As human beings we’re always curious, and have opinions on almost everything. But when we have read the topics from others we may or may not agree with them. And it’s quite obvious that you may not like or agree to what the others say, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
But still, this is how you get to write your blog. You give your opinion; otherwise comment on others.
Would you like to comment on mine !

Social Networking

Social networking sites, like MySpace, orkut, bigadda, Linkedin and Facebook, are changing the fabric of the Internet. The users flock to these trendy and entertaining Internet sites from one to another.

Social networking sites currently rule the popular crowd on the Internet socially.
It appears with every new site that any site could become the next outcast. Let it be Linkedin, Facebook, orkut or Myspace for that matter.

One way people gain from these sites a lot. Through social networking, people use networks of online friends and group memberships to create real–life friendships or start a business relation may be. Besides establishing important social relationships, social networking members can share their interests with other like–minded members by joining groups and forums, sending gifts, challenging quizzes, playing games, chatting , listen to their favorite songs and watch music videos and much more. Networking also helps members establish business contacts.
I do agree with Tim O’ Reilly,” What distinguished 2.0 is the design of systems that harness network effects—a broader way of saying community—to get better the more people use them.”
For instance, we at zeroCode use these sites not only for establishing business contacts but also for fun and entertainment. Using Linkedin and Facebook have increased my business contacts which was otherwise a very difficult approach.
Building apps for Facebook has helped us reach many people all over the world. We have come up with the apps like myLists to create any kind of lists you want, you can even add images to your list, Swap It! A nice and an interesting game and Classy Gifts a gifting app where you can package send and receive truly-classy gifts to and from your friends.

Is Facebook Business Oriented?

Lot of discussion about Facebook is going on the blogs where people talk about the usefulness of Facebook for their businesses and its being the best social network. Initially Facebook was not intended for business. It was a social network for colleges which has quickly manifested into something important. The blogosphere has been asking for a change in Facebook so that they can specify a more professional way to talk for their businesses. Other than this poking someone is not the best way of forming a business relationship. So some change is needed. Facebook is best for establishing contacts like the LinkedIn and others networking sites. Using Facebook I’ve been able to find and be found by many. Having those connections has brought increased interest in my business.The connections are generally business related, Facebook can product results for our business, Facebook seems the most poised for expansion and growth. Adding the applications has made it much more interesting.
I have had a number of people call me and ask me how they can build Facebook apps faster. My answer to them is “zeroCode”. We have built Facebook applications using zC and they are very convinced. B’coz, zeroCode builds “fast apps fast”. Building application and integrating it with Facebook is much easier and straight forward with zeroCode.

Web Analytics

“Web analytics” - The process of analyzing the behavior of visitors to a Web site. Web analytics enables a business to attract more visitors, retain or attract new customers for company’s products, or to increase the traffic to the website which would in turn increase the company revenue.

Web analytics is definitely a numbers game and one that tends to spin out of control if not monitored and tailored to reveal that specific data. This is indicative of how visitors come to our site not only to locate us, but also, how and what they read on our site. For example, how many unique visitors exit from a landing page? How many visitors visited the products and services page or the time spent on the said page etc.?

In other words, it is a place where we get a variety of information gathered from each user footprint that happens upon our website.

There are a number of inexpensive software programs. Google Analytics is an example that is very simple to use, with fewer features than most others available for purchase in the market around the World Wide Web.

Every company should follow web analytics program in order to understand the traffic patterns and visitors behavior in respect to individual web page content. The greater the number of visitors to a web page, the greater the chances for success through awareness around the world.

I have been tracking my website zeroCode on Google and yahoo analytics and find that every now and then I have to make changes based on the visitors coming to my site and ofcouse their interests with us.

Most of us don't really use the data as it should be or can be utilized. We generally look at basic stats like visits and pageviews, but very rarely do we realize and analyze things such as click streams or funnels that would help us improve our site. More focus should be on the keywords, the clicks coming from various steams etc,
While going through some of the articles on the Web Analytics, I came across a very interesting book by Avinash Kaushik called “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” that discuss the following points:
With analytics we can start tracking and analyzing internal search queries (Like what actually they were looking for on the sites; what are they interested? whether they want to buy a product? Or want a demo or any other information) that users make so that you can qualify who they are, where are they from and how we can modify our site to increase the conversion rate.
Understanding customer behavior is never an easy thing and with tons of data; it can be overwhelming to try and understand the customers. By taking the raw data and segmenting it we can get a better understanding of the visitors.
Analytics can also be used for reporting purpose.
Once the analysis is done on the site, we should develop a plan of action for how we're going to improve the site. For example, if we find a very popular entry page that we were unaware of, we might consider adding more links to some new documents on the site from that page. Or if we see that many of our customers get to the home page and then leave, we know we should work on it.
Making changes to the Web site should be a continual process, and the changes should always be exciting both to us and to the readers.
Web analytics is an on-going process. Once the changes are made, start tracking it in the Web logs and evaluate the Web analytics again and again.
And the process goes on and on and on…………….