Market yourself with Linkedin

Hi every one....
Today my blog post is about linkedin. Some time you are already join with linkedin or you don't know anything
about linkedin. So let's know some important things about linkedin. I thing it would be help to you to brand your self.
Linkedin is a social networking website for people in professional occupations. Founded in December 2002 and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of January 2013, Linkedin reports more than 200 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories.(Source: Wikipedia)

Linkdin provides an excellent platforme for getting your name out to prospective partners, clients or employers. Unlike Facebook or MySpace that also have strong social and entertainment aspects, Linkdin is exclusively geared towered professionals. Nearly half of linkdin members are decision-makers for their companies, so you'll want to make your best impression.

How to really use Linkedin?

1. Set a goal.
2. Decide who are the people in the best position to help you reach that goal.
3. Use Linkdin to find them.

Components of a linkedin profile 
Linkedin profile has several main components

• Title: This part of your profile appears directly under your name.
• Summary: Your summery allows you to create a free form description of your experience, expertise and your objectives.
• Experience: Linkdin allows you to create a rather lengthy online resume with your currrent and previous work experience listed.
• Education: Since your linkdin profile is an online resume, this area is important if formal education is expected for what you do.
• Additional information: Just as it is with a paper resume, you'll want to consider adding information that can help make your profile stand out.

The value of Linkedin

• Establish your professional profile and control one of the top search result for your name.
• Build and maintain a broader network of professional you can trust.
• Find and reconnect with colleagues and classmates.
• You can learn about other companies.
• Leverage powerful tool to find and reach the people you need.
• Tap into the knowledge of your network.
• Discover new opportunities.

I thing now you have good idea about Linkedin. So try to join with Linkedin and market yourself world wide.

All the best...

Remarketing on Google Display Network

Hi Every one....
Today my blog post is about remarketing on Google Display Network. First of all I'm going to explain what
is Google Display Network. It is Google's network for displaying sponsored ads besides its search engine. This can include YouTube, Google partnering websites and other Google properties. Google Display Network lets you place ads on a variety of news sites, blogs and other niche sites across the internet. The goal of the Display Network is to bring your message to exactly the right customers where they are online.

Remarketing is the part of interest based advertising which is one of the most interesting trend happening at
the moment. Remarketing is a feature that allows you to target users who previously came to your website what visited certain section of your website. Then you can re-target these users on the Google Display Network using image as or text as. The most interesting fact of Remaketing is that you no longer target people surely based on the content of the pages they browsing, but you can follow them everywhere on the Google Display Network. Remarketing allows you to re-engage with people who are already aware of your brand.  

How does Google Remarketing work

1. Set up a code to help track user behavior.
2. A user visits your website and your code is added to their computer.
3. Leaving your site they see your web ads across Google.
4. This will prompt them to revisit your site. 

Why using Remarketing

• Follow your audience everywhere - you can re-target people everywhere no matter the content of the page they have viewed.     . 
• Re-target visitors from all traffic source - you can re-target people that came to your website through all source of traffic and not only from previous AdWord visits.
• The right message to the right audience - you can focus on very specific group of users and then-even very specific messages to them.
• It can provide a strong brand and product reference.  
• Better click through rates and strong data capture opportunities.  
• Will provide better measurement of user behavior.          
• Strong granularity possible - you can deeply customize your audiences. 

Using Remarketing will add great value to your current searching content campaigns. You can use this tool to easier your marketing campaign and easily target niche. Use Remarketing to increase user loyalty and drive brand awareness. Reaching existing customers helps you to position your brand or product and reinforce your sales message.

        

                           

YouTube as a Marketing Tool

Today my blog post will explain how YouTube is important as a marketing tool. First of all we should know
what is YouTube. Simply YouTube is a video sharing website. Users can upload, view, share and download video through the YouTube.
Now I'm going to explain some statistics which are explain the  important of YouTube. (Source- YouTube Statistics)

• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month.
• Over 6 billion hours of videos are watch each month on YouTube. That's almost an hour for every person on Earth.
• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
• YouTube is localized in 56 countries and across 61 languages.
• A million advertisers using Google ad platforms. 
• YouTube is available on hundreds of million of devices. 

I think now you can understand how YouTube is important. YouTube isn't just for entertainment, it's one of the new marketing tools for effectively promoting business or products to lots of potential customers for little budget. YouTube is make good platform for small business with small budget. Because we just want only a video camera and a good creativity. 

Now I'm going to explain, how YouTube is important as a marketing tool. 

• Creative YouTube videos can help enhance your company's image and increase the overall awareness of your company.  
• Companies can compose an imaginative YouTube video explaining each of your major products or services. companies should make clear how each product is positioned and why it is better than the competitive offering.  
• Companies can use YouTube videos for explain product features and benefits, while giving guide line for product use.
• If company can identify customers problems, they can answer to customer by using specific videos. 
• Companies can upload their News, Events, CSR activities videos. These are help to increase customers loyalty. 

Now you have a idea about how companies can use YouTube as a Marketing Tool. So lets try. You can make your own video and try to be a popular person in the world. 

  

How to target a niche audience with Facebook Advertising

Hi every one...
We all are know what is facebook. In this blog post I'll going to explain about facebook advertising.
First of all I would like to explain why companies use facebook for their advertising.

Why Facebook Advertising?
1. Growing Facebook every where

• 1 billion active users per month
• 600 million users on mobile 
• 58% of them return daily
• 6.35 hours spent by users per month

2. Better targeting than any other advertising media

3. Better engagement with your target audience

4. Adapts to your budget

Now a days lot of companies use facebook for their advertising other than the other social media such as twitter, linkdin, etc. When consider the above benefit, facebook is very effective advertising media than other.

Now I'm going to explain how can we Advertise on Facebook. Mainly there are 3 simple step to follow. 

• Step 1 : Build your facebook page.
• Step 2 : Connect with people.
• Step 3 : Engage your audience.    

I can explain these 3 steps like that. First of all you have to set up your business fan page on facebook. Then you can invite friends and family to like and share your page. As well as you can give your page exposure with facebook ads. After that you can engage with your fans by using interesting content and promote special posts, offers, polls and events. 

There are some important things about facebook advertising. Facebook has a option to target your audience who are related to your product or brand. 

These are the Targeting Option that  you have in facebook.   

1. Demographic : 

    You can target users by location ( by city, country), age, sex and relationship stetus.

2. Birthday :

    As the example you can create ads that are targeted at people who have a birthday in the next month.

3. Precise Interest : 

    You can create a ads that are targeting people according to their interest, activities, job title etc.

4. Education :

    Target users by the years they graduated, whether they have graduated or are still in collage, which      university they attended, and even which subjects are they follow. 

5. Connection : 

    In addition to this demographic data, you can also target people who have liked your page and join your group.

I think now you have idea about how to target a niche audience with Facebook advertising. I think companies can generate more and more profit by using this cost effective facebook advertising. 

   

Social Media Brand Health Check

Hi Every one...
This time my blog post is about how to do a Social Media Brand Health Check and analyze it.
First of all we have to know What Social Media is. Simply Social Media is people having conversations online. Such as Facebook, twitter, Linkedin, flicker, skype, youtube etc we can identify as the social media.
Now I like to explain what Social Media Marketing is. Social Media Marketing is "the marketing effort of securing a p;ace for your brand, in the online conversations taking place on social media web, and hence increasing the likability of your brand". When we talk about social media marketing, it is not about publishing your advertisements on Facebook and Youtube. As well as we cant controlling people talking negatively about your brand on social media.
Now I going to explain how we can planning social media for your brand. First of all we have to understand social media planning framework. Its consist with 5 component. Those are Listen ( Understanding the current status), Analyze (Social Media Brand Health Check), Set Goals (Knowing where you want to go), Engage (Taking action to take you toward your goals) and Amplify (Support with promotion).
Social Media Brand Health Check (SMBHC) is important to analyze your brand current situation in Social Media. Social Media Brand Health Check is a comparison of your brand's social media presence against your competitors. This will give an indication for areas you need to pay highest attention.
This SMBHC will focus on 5 key areas. Those are,

• Reach - Number of people have reach through your social media profile.
• Quality of audience - People who are reach to your profile, is relevant to your target audience.    
• Engagement - How they actively engage with your brand.
• Share of voice - How often people talk about your brand.
• Sentiment - Conversation are positive or negative on your brand. 

Lets we see how to do a Social Media Brand Health Check. First of all you have to download the tool at http://bit.ly/Ww3cQg . Here I have selected ODEL as my brand. ODEL is one of the leading fashion store in Sri Lanka. As well as I have selected another 2 competitors brand to compare with ODEL. My selected competitors brands are Nolimit and Fashion Bug. Now you can fill the data for each criterion, for each brand of the SMBHC tool. After filling the all data, you can use your own judgement and rate satisfied are you about your brand for each of the criteria. Then your SMBCH score will be auto calculated. 

SMBHC Score Analysis

• If your score is below 25 - You are seriously in Social Media Trouble. You need to speed up your adoption to the new media landscape. 
• If your score is from 26 to 50 - There can be few areas where you are really strong on social media. Find out those areas and make them stronger and maintain. 
•  If your score is from 51 to 80 - You are comparatively a successful brand on social media. However there can be few area to improve. 
• If your score is above 81 - Your brand rocks on social media. Keep it up.

Here my selected brand is ODEL. After doing SMBCH, my brand score is 68.18. Its mean my selected brand is comparatively a successful brand on social media. But I have identify some areas to be improve. ODEL is not strong on twitter. So ODEL should focused on twitter and they should try to increase their followers. 

Now I think you have idea about SMBHC. So try to use social media marketing on your brand and analyze how your brand perform in social media against your competitors. 

Place your Advertisement on Google

Today my blog post is about Keyword research and how to do a Google adwords campaign.
Search engine marketing is play very important role in any marketing campaign. SEO and PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing) are the main part of the Search engine marketing. To do a PPC marketing campaing , we use Google AdWords. Now I going to explain How to do a key word research and how to creat AdWord account.
I have done a key word research for "English courses in Colombo". You can run a key word research by using google AdWords. Now I explain how to do this.
First of all you have to log on to AdWords using your google account.Then you should select Keyword Tool under the tab of Tools and Analysis.

Now you can enter English courses in Colombo as the word or phrase that going to search in google. After that you can select Sri Lanka as the location and English as the language. Now you can click on search and get the most common keyword that people used in search. Then you can select appropriate keyword and download it.

These are the keyword I have selected. Other than the keyword you can see Competition, Global monthly
searches and Local monthly searches.
This is called as the Keyword research.
Now we can identify what are the keyword used by people, when they are searching English courses in google.
Now you can create your own advertisement by using theses keyword.
Ok. Lets start. You can start your campaign by clicking campaign tab and then select new campaign. when you click the new campaign, you have some option to select. Here you should select "search network only" option under the new campaign. After that you can give campaign name, location, network and bidding option. Here we are going to create very simple add. So we don't want make any changes here. After click the save and continue button you can create your add. First of all you should give a Add group name and then you can create your add by entering  Headline, description and Display URL. Then you should select keywords that your add can show on google when people search for things related to your keyword. After doing all things you can set your default bid and then you can go to billing. Here I do not going to explain how we make payments.
I think now you have a general knowledge about how to create a PPC adds.
Finally, I would like to explain what are the benefits of PPC marketing.

• Immediately you can reach millions of viewers around the world. 
• Your adds may be placed in the top position where they can be easily viewed. 
• You can create a campaign strategy to target specific group or individual who already have an interest your product. 
• PPC marketing will give your online business the competitive edge.

Try to use this. All the best...!!!!!

My first experience on the Web based lecture

Now is time to change the traditional class room culture. This blog post is about my first web based lecture experience. When I was in school, teacher came to class room and teaches using black board.  Then I came to University there are two things differ from the school. White board replaces to the black board and teachers used power point presentation. Finally I luckily to got new experience, in this digital world.

First of all I would like to thank Mr. Amitha Amarasinghe who was organized this lecture. Technology that they use here is webinars. Simply Webinar is a way of conducting lecture and workshop through the Internet. My first webinar experience was on Search Engine Optimization which was conducted by Mr. Suranga Priyashantha who is a senior marketing consultant at Australia. He conducted the lecture from Australia and we participated from the university premises.
This is very effective method and this generates lot of advantages. Mr. Suranga who is our resource person is from Australia. So even physically we can't contact with him because of the distance. This technology made a remarkable opportunity for us to get the knowledge from that kind of resource person. Mr. Suranga did this lecture very well by using some slides. After the lecture traditionally we fear to ask question form lecturer. But that time we asked some question from lecturer through the Facebook.
Here I explain my personal experience about web based lecture. So some time I felt this method is uncomfortable. Why I said like that. Because students couldn't joined with lecture interactively and we couldn't asked question when lecture is going on.
I think this is not a big issue. This is the first step. So we have to develop lot of areas. In near future we can do this in a better way by minimizing issues with modern technology.

      

Analysis of News 1st Web site Usability.

News 1st is the one of major news provider in Sri Lanka. Now I going to explain how I feel about News 1st web site.
Accessibility 
First of all site load time is reasonable. Its take 8 to 10 second.
Contrast between text and background is good. They are using black text in white background.
They use normal size font with bold heading. It is easy to readable.
We can see several banner adds and flash on the web site. These adds are not interrupt for viewers.
Their is no any appropriate ALT tags for images. So this is not enough to satisfied.
This site does have custom not-found/404 pages. Its not good for web viewers.

Identity 
Company logo is placed on the top of the web page. Viewers can clearly identify the company logo.
We Report You Deiced is the company tag line and daily head line is on this tagline. So these are clearly explain company purpose.
This site mainly provide news. When viewers come to home page they can clearly understand web site less than 5 second.
Company information is available in the web site. But path is not clear and difficult to find the place that information are included.
 As well as there is no any contact information.

Navigation
Main navigation is easily identifiable. This navigation tabs are top on the web site.
Navigation labels are not clear. It does not give clear description. T
his web site has reasonable number of buttons and link. Its not too high.
Company logo is linked to home page. When we are in the any page, by clicking company logo easily we can come to home page.
There are some links to other web pages and social networks. Easily we can identify these links.
There is a site search option. It is positioned on the top of the web page and it is easy to access.

Content 
This web site consist with the news. So there is lot of hot news, special news, etc. But these major headings are not clear.
Critical content such as head lines, special news are above the fold and clearly identify.
They do not use too much styles and color. Mainly they used same type of text and main colors are black and white.
They emphasis head lines from bold text and they use text background color.
There is lot of adds. Therefor they obstruct the web page content.   
This site main copy is concise and explanatory. In few seconds we can understand this is all about news.
The URL http://www.newsfirst.lk/english/ Its clearly explain the web site name and the version of the web site.( English or Sinhala). So its very user friendly.
The HTML can be see by clicking the web site tab.( Eg: www.newsfirst.lk/english/sports) This title clearly explain the content of the page.

News 1st web site is user friendly. But some of thing have to change and develop. This is how I see the News 1st web site.

The Digital Marketing Revolution. Is Sri Lanka Ready?

What is your answer? Yes or No. If somebody asks this question from me, it’s difficult to give any direct answer. My answer may be both. Why would I say like that?

In 1978, Sri Lanka introduced open economic policies. After that Sri Lanka connected with the world and involve with new technologies. Sri Lanka went through the stages of different technologies and media such as Radio, TV, Internet, Mobile phone etc.

First of all we should know what Digital Marketing is? “Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices such as computers, tablets, smart phones,  cell phones, digital billboards, and game consoles to engage with consumers and other business partners”. (From Wikipedia).  Internet Marketing is a major component of digital marketing.

When I say YES for above question, there are some facts to prove it. Computer literacy in Sri Lanka is about 35% and the main objective of the government is to increase the computer literacy up to 75% by the year 2016. And also internet users in Sri Lanka are 15.1% (2011) of the population. There are nearly 1.2 million users’ accesses the internet weekly or more often. When talking about Social Media in Sri Lanka, Facebook come to a major position. Currently, there are 1.21 million Facebook users in Sri Lanka. According to TRCSL, the total mobile subscription as of 2012 was 20,324,070. That’s almost equal to the current population of 20,869,000.Approximately 46% of internet users access the internet through their mobile phones. These all facts are saying the current position of Sri Lanka in the digital world. So now a day’s lots of companies try to do their promotion through the digital marketing campaign. And also some companies sell their product online. Moreover there are some online shopping malls such as anything.lk, kapruka.lk, wowmall.lk, gadget.lk, tickets.lk etc. Considering these factors we can say Sri Lanka is ready for the Digital Marketing Revolution.

But, is this enough to say Sri Lanka is ready? Above mention facts and data are collected from the entire country. But we should analyze these data according to the geographical areas in Sri Lanka. Percentages of the computer literacy and internet users are high in the Western and Central province. When we consider the other provinces, their percentage is low and these rural area people are not aware about the digital medias. If some companies want to reach their brands to the rural area customers, digital marketing is not the ideal communication method.

Sri Lanka is still developing. So in another 5 years time these all data and facts will be expired. And also digital marketing will get the highest proportion of the promotion budget of the companies and other Medias will be vanished.