Infographic originally published on Mashable.com, found via 
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We have moved! Visit us at our new home www.gauravpandey.com.au
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We have moved! Visit us at our new home www.gauravpandey.com.au
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Monday, 31 October 2011
Here's a really informative guide on Twitter. This 32-page e book is full of useful insights and tools to help you get started. Happy tweeting!
Twitter Business Guide
Twitter Business Guide
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Do you need a social media policy?
Let’s try to understand what constitutes a progressive social media strategy. The basic idea that social media marketers want to base their strategy around is direct and personalised engagement with the consumer and there is no dearth of effort from companies in trying to explore ways to use social media for marketing.
However, forming a concrete plan for a business by bringing together various aspects of social involves proper resource allocation, constant involvement, making use of analytical tools to monitor progress, loads of patience, and effective social guidelines and rules of engagement for employees. In a way, social media demands virtues such as patience, openness and transparency.
However, often in the hype around social media strategists can easily overlook some important areas. Internal social media education within organisations is one such aspect that often gets ignored resulting in social media setbacks.
Employees though their interactions on social networks can leave a trail of comments, threads which can nullify the positive impact of the efforts of social media team of the organisation. While organisations cannot and should not force employees to abstain from discussing their work life on such platforms, it is still important for the employees to be aware of the potential damage their actions on social networking sites can cause their organisation.
Training and educational programs on the topic will help the employees understand the importance of social media integration and adoption, even if they are not directly involved in the organisation’s social media plans. As a social media consultant cannot apply a one size fits all strategy to businesses, he also cannot have a common education for all the employees. There needs to be a marked segregation of people based on their profiles and interests. Employees in an organisation can be broadly divided into these categories:
Strategists
Strategists are responsible for the overall social strategies and how they impact the medium to long term business objectives of the company. Their training should focus more on planning and goal setting. Since the role of strategists is to provide direction, it is important they communicate effectively with the rest of the team. A personalised and transparent approach in dealing with other employees can go a long way in developing effective social practices within an organisation. An updated LinkedIn profile, a personal blog and regular interaction with employees will help this group engage better with both internal and external stakeholders.
Overseers
Managers are responsible for the day to day implementation of these strategies. Not only should this group fully understand the company’s social media policy and monitoring tools, they must also remain up-to-date with the latest technologies. As this group is directly responsible for the deployment of social media programs, ongoing training and participation in workshops and conferences is important. Regular interaction with specialists as well as fellow employees should also be encouraged as often the collective wisdom of a team far exceeds that of any individual.
Operators
This group of employees is involved in direct interaction with customers, therefore it is imperative that they have a clear direction about their role. This group should fully understand the social media guidelines set by the company which will help them interact more confidently with customers. They should also have a reliable point of contact for their queries. Further they should be able to prioritise customer complaints with little or no supervision. Again regular interaction with their managers will provide them a sense of direction and help them promote the organisation more effectively.
Observers
This group may not be directly involved with the implementation of social media plans of an organisation, but they may be impacted by the outcome of those plans. It’s important that even these employees are part of a practical training on the benefits of social and how to engage on social media platforms. This understanding will also help them understand the importance of behaving more responsibly on social networking websites.
Basic social media training
Needless to say that social media does have cascading effects though an organisation. Information sessions on the benefits and risks involved with social media can prove to be extremely helpful for employees. Regular interaction between management and other employees also helps in identifying areas where further training can help.
A short mandatory training session as part of an employee induction program is a good idea. The core social components of this program will depend on the organisations to which they are applied. Broadly speaking, some of the areas which could be covered in a basic social media training program are:
· A brief introduction on social media, and the business case for involvement
· Social media goals of the organisation
· Social media engagement guidelines and the potential risks involved
· Clearly defined social media roles in an organisation
· Effective measurement and monitoring practices, including data gathering and benchmarking
· Feedback mechanism and sharing of best practices
It’s important to remember that social strategy is fluid. It requires constant monitoring and changes in strategy. Employees should be encouraged to attend regular conferences and webinars. Regular sessions with internal and external specialists should also be encouraged.
A good internal social media strategy boils down to ensuring that the basic things are done right. Overall, the emphasis should be on bringing in a more open and transparent culture which encourages participation from everyone. Remember that the most important aspect of social media is engagement and that is unlikely to change. The best way to do social is by being social.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Thursday, 1 September 2011
In search for quality links
As a marketer you probably know by now that obtaining links is one of the most important methods in order to get proper rankings in some of the major search engines. Is that right?
Well, obtaining links is may help your website promotion but it does not necessarily means that all links are equal or that all links actually provide useful value.
Not all links are created equal. A lot of mythology and misinformation exists on the World Wide Web about obtaining the right kind of links. Our intentions are not about revealing the truth as some things are not clear and simple but to set the main points on which one should base his decisions.
Many professionals would suggest that in order to know what a good link is one must follow Google and try to discover every daily algorithm change and that failing to do so can be a real obstacle in the way to the number one spot.
Guess what? Some of these people are actually after your money. Sure they know a bit about Google and search engine placements but the truth is plain simple. Search engines provide site owners with the best practices. There is no need to be an expert to follow it. The basic guidelines stand the test of time and seem to hold the real value.
Since Google's business model relies upon filling the surfers intentions it also needs to ensure that website owners know how they will deserve the top spots so that competition will lead to better websites. Trying to understand the basic search engine intentions in relationship with the algorithm task, the two step process is all about deciding:
Using basic methods one can tell the visitor about the web page content and what keyword or key phrase is in focus. Being worthwhile, on the other hand is about getting the right recommendations which are the right links.
It is not hard to find out which are better links, links that are bought from a non-relevant old established site or some that are diverse and originate from established and known sites in the industry.
The value of links is measured by three simple indicators
If you get links from well established, old and relevant pages rules you will find out that fewer of these quality links will more than outweigh dozens of others' originated in non-relevant sites. This, works for site owners for years, regardless of the minor or major amends to Google's algorithm.
Getting good links is a different story. It does take a lot of effort and earned knowledge on how to promote a web site.
Where can we find great links?
The most common and easiest way of finding good links is to use the basic tools the web provides for inspecting who links to your competitors.
One simple way is using the Yahoo Link domain query. In Yahoo site explorer just use the following search query:
linkdomain:domainname.com -inurl:domainname.com
Were domainname.com is the name of your competitor domain; the domain that you would like to check for its backlinks.
About the source:
WAO internet marketing provides SEO and web-marketing releated guides for website owners who would like to gain the basic knowledge on promoting their websites in global and local search engines.
Well, obtaining links is may help your website promotion but it does not necessarily means that all links are equal or that all links actually provide useful value.
Not all links are created equal. A lot of mythology and misinformation exists on the World Wide Web about obtaining the right kind of links. Our intentions are not about revealing the truth as some things are not clear and simple but to set the main points on which one should base his decisions.
Many professionals would suggest that in order to know what a good link is one must follow Google and try to discover every daily algorithm change and that failing to do so can be a real obstacle in the way to the number one spot.
Guess what? Some of these people are actually after your money. Sure they know a bit about Google and search engine placements but the truth is plain simple. Search engines provide site owners with the best practices. There is no need to be an expert to follow it. The basic guidelines stand the test of time and seem to hold the real value.
Since Google's business model relies upon filling the surfers intentions it also needs to ensure that website owners know how they will deserve the top spots so that competition will lead to better websites. Trying to understand the basic search engine intentions in relationship with the algorithm task, the two step process is all about deciding:
- What is the web page really about?
- Is the page worthwhile in this topic?
Using basic methods one can tell the visitor about the web page content and what keyword or key phrase is in focus. Being worthwhile, on the other hand is about getting the right recommendations which are the right links.
It is not hard to find out which are better links, links that are bought from a non-relevant old established site or some that are diverse and originate from established and known sites in the industry.
The value of links is measured by three simple indicators
- Relevancy- the link should be from a relevant page. Better be a relevant page within a relevant site
- More trust for old and established sites- links for older sites tend to have a greater value than those from newer sites
- Placements within the page- Links that are part of the page's unique content are more likely to be clicked and thus hold greater value from those who are laid in the footer of the page or below the fold.
If you get links from well established, old and relevant pages rules you will find out that fewer of these quality links will more than outweigh dozens of others' originated in non-relevant sites. This, works for site owners for years, regardless of the minor or major amends to Google's algorithm.
Getting good links is a different story. It does take a lot of effort and earned knowledge on how to promote a web site.
Where can we find great links?
The most common and easiest way of finding good links is to use the basic tools the web provides for inspecting who links to your competitors.
One simple way is using the Yahoo Link domain query. In Yahoo site explorer just use the following search query:
linkdomain:domainname.com -inurl:domainname.com
Were domainname.com is the name of your competitor domain; the domain that you would like to check for its backlinks.
About the source:
WAO internet marketing provides SEO and web-marketing releated guides for website owners who would like to gain the basic knowledge on promoting their websites in global and local search engines.
Monday, 15 August 2011
Friday, 22 July 2011
Quality Writing is the Best way of Search Engine Optimization - SE Optimization
By Kelvin Tylson
While search engine optimization is essential for promotion of products and services or overall business online, quality contents could be the best tool for achievement of such objective.Getting traffic to the website is only possible when the website is recognized by Google and other search engines. That is why good website construction combined with search engine optimization can achieve the desired results for the site. At the same time quality contents is perhaps the best component for any good web site constructions
Essence of Good Website
Usually competent SEO company knows the way of designing good website that would attract the search engine crawlers. Very often the contents on the website are meant for the eyes of search engine spiders and not human eyes.
Components of Quality Contents
Components of Quality Contents
Quality contents on the web normally contain the following components.
* One of the most important factors included in the quality content is the keyword density. Proper keyword density will help search engine spiders identify the website perfectly.
* Another important aspect of the quality contents on the web is identifying the key phrases.* Quality contents should always contain updated information on any topic and should be updated regularly.
* Writing should be simple and easily comprehensible that would help search engine optimization effectively.
Writing Quality Paragraph
Initial paragraph of the quality contents should contain the target keywords or key phrases. In result it becomes easier for the search engine to identify the particular website through the keywords or key phrases. Ideal way for the optimization process is 7% keyword density. However, keeping more than 10 percent would result in the website being marked as spam by Google and other leading search engine. Usually the provider of seo services will try to keep the keyword density of the website contents within the specified limits but more often than not the key phrases work better than keywords in this respect.
Avoiding Spelling Mistakes
Quality contents on the web for search engine optimization are avoiding the spelling mistakes. Web pages to be highly accessible require that the contents do not have spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes. Especially spelling mistakes in keywords or key phrases can spell disaster as the search engine spiders may not find the web page at all when keywords are keyed in by the web surfer.
About the author:
Kelvin Tylson is here to give you his own facts about SEO company and Google SEO. You're probably thinking, everyone says that, so, what's different here. It's the assurance of quality, genuineness, and a guarantee that values your time and interest.
Friday, 8 July 2011
Web 3.0 Brings a New Wave of Startup Opportunities
By Effie Sha
What if your Google search for "Paris Hilton" listed your top result as the Hilton Hotel in Paris, because it knew your interests were not in the other direction? This is the current dream of Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web.
He calls his dream "Web 3.0" or the "Semantic Web," meaning it understands user context. He and many other experts believe that the Web 3.0 browser will act more like a personal assistant than a search engine. As you search the Web, the browser records your interests in your local storage. The more you use the Web, the more your browser learns about you, and the more relevant will be your results.
Current advertising and public relations startups are already thinking along these lines in fields all the way from clothes shopping, art galleries, online advertising, to managing press releases. In some ways, these aren't that different from the old Amazon.com "recommendation engine," which suggests new products based on your surfing and buying habits, but they go much further.
Someday you will be able to ask your browser open questions like "Where should I take my wife for a good movie and dinner?" Your browser would consult its intelligence of what you and she like and dislike, take into account your current location, and then suggest the right movies and restaurants. If you are the first to deliver this, your startup can be the next Google success!
But some are skeptical about whether the Semantic Web - or at least, Berners-Lee's view of it - will actually take hold. They reference other technologies also trying to reinvent the online world as we know it, from 3D virtual worlds to intelligent avatars. Web 3.0 could mean many things, and most of the possibilities have not yet been invented.
The Semantic Web isn't really even a new idea. This notion of a Web where machines can better read, understand, and process all the data floating through cyberspace first surfaced in 2001, when a story appeared in Scientific American. This article describes a brave new world where software "agents" lead the way in performing Web-based tasks that elude most humans.
A current example is the GetGlue from AdaptiveBlue. If you visit a movie blog, and read about a particular film, it immediately links to sites where you can buy or rent that film. Another example is WolframAlpha, an amazing computational engine that went live recently, which creates intelligent results, graphs, and reports from any natural language question.
But we are a long way from agents that can do full natural language processing and think on their own (artificial intelligence). A recent startup, Alitora Systems, provides software to enterprises based on a natural language processing (NLP) engine.
It builds knowledge statements from unstructured media files - that's a particular challenge for the life sciences where high-value knowledge about many things, such as the relationship between genetics and disease, lies hidden within journal articles, research papers, clinical trial data, FDA websites, and even graphical data.
But extracting information from even less structured data such as Twitter feeds is a very different and sometimes more difficult knowledge extraction problem. The objective is the same; assimilating unstructured data, giving it some robust analysis, and offering the extracted knowledge across a collaborative network.
Just think of the fertile ground all this opens for startups! If you're looking for that "million dollar idea" to build a plan around, here is your chance. But don't wait too long, because the din for Web 3.0 is getting louder and louder. Catch the wave soon or it will pass you by!
What if your Google search for "Paris Hilton" listed your top result as the Hilton Hotel in Paris, because it knew your interests were not in the other direction? This is the current dream of Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the (first) World Wide Web.
He calls his dream "Web 3.0" or the "Semantic Web," meaning it understands user context. He and many other experts believe that the Web 3.0 browser will act more like a personal assistant than a search engine. As you search the Web, the browser records your interests in your local storage. The more you use the Web, the more your browser learns about you, and the more relevant will be your results.
Current advertising and public relations startups are already thinking along these lines in fields all the way from clothes shopping, art galleries, online advertising, to managing press releases. In some ways, these aren't that different from the old Amazon.com "recommendation engine," which suggests new products based on your surfing and buying habits, but they go much further.
Someday you will be able to ask your browser open questions like "Where should I take my wife for a good movie and dinner?" Your browser would consult its intelligence of what you and she like and dislike, take into account your current location, and then suggest the right movies and restaurants. If you are the first to deliver this, your startup can be the next Google success!
But some are skeptical about whether the Semantic Web - or at least, Berners-Lee's view of it - will actually take hold. They reference other technologies also trying to reinvent the online world as we know it, from 3D virtual worlds to intelligent avatars. Web 3.0 could mean many things, and most of the possibilities have not yet been invented.
The Semantic Web isn't really even a new idea. This notion of a Web where machines can better read, understand, and process all the data floating through cyberspace first surfaced in 2001, when a story appeared in Scientific American. This article describes a brave new world where software "agents" lead the way in performing Web-based tasks that elude most humans.
A current example is the GetGlue from AdaptiveBlue. If you visit a movie blog, and read about a particular film, it immediately links to sites where you can buy or rent that film. Another example is WolframAlpha, an amazing computational engine that went live recently, which creates intelligent results, graphs, and reports from any natural language question.
But we are a long way from agents that can do full natural language processing and think on their own (artificial intelligence). A recent startup, Alitora Systems, provides software to enterprises based on a natural language processing (NLP) engine.
It builds knowledge statements from unstructured media files - that's a particular challenge for the life sciences where high-value knowledge about many things, such as the relationship between genetics and disease, lies hidden within journal articles, research papers, clinical trial data, FDA websites, and even graphical data.
But extracting information from even less structured data such as Twitter feeds is a very different and sometimes more difficult knowledge extraction problem. The objective is the same; assimilating unstructured data, giving it some robust analysis, and offering the extracted knowledge across a collaborative network.
Just think of the fertile ground all this opens for startups! If you're looking for that "million dollar idea" to build a plan around, here is your chance. But don't wait too long, because the din for Web 3.0 is getting louder and louder. Catch the wave soon or it will pass you by!
About the author:
Senior Software Developer, working in RayooTech software outsourcing company, website: http://www.techomechina.com/
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Technology in healthcare
An experiment in Tamil Nadu has highlighted, with some success, the role technology can play in ensuring quality healthcare, especially in villages.
The two-year programme involved the use of a Java-enabled handset application that health workers used to instantly transfer data to computers. The data was then collated and analysed.
The use of mobile phones and computers has been instrumental in keeping track of health data and identifying disease patterns. The system has helped in anticipating viral outbreaks in regions that were under surveillance.
If used effectively, this can help in taking comprehensive healthcare services to rural India and reaching out to the country's underprivileged. If the governments concerned are serious in improving our ailing rural health centers, using technology to generate and monitor data should be one of the first things they must be looking at.
The need of the hour is better involvement of private institutions and individuals to ensure a larger mass base is brought under the radar.
Read more here: http://www.livemint.com/2010/09/02211944/Cellphonebased-technology-to.html?atype=tp
The use of mobile phones and computers has been instrumental in keeping track of health data and identifying disease patterns. The system has helped in anticipating viral outbreaks in regions that were under surveillance.
If used effectively, this can help in taking comprehensive healthcare services to rural India and reaching out to the country's underprivileged. If the governments concerned are serious in improving our ailing rural health centers, using technology to generate and monitor data should be one of the first things they must be looking at.
The need of the hour is better involvement of private institutions and individuals to ensure a larger mass base is brought under the radar.
Read more here: http://www.livemint.com/2010/09/02211944/Cellphonebased-technology-to.html?atype=tp
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Facebook vs. Who? Users Stay Longer on Personal News Engine Genieo Than on Facebook
Unlike other news readers, Genieo is a completely automatic, completely private personalization engine that can sense the difference between intention (I am looking for a new apartment) and attention (I will always care about stories related to Venture Capital); it can differentiate between caring about Derek Jeter all the time (you are a scary stalker fan) and only caring about him from May to October (you're just a Yankees fan).
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
5 reasons to try Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft's OneNote is a first-class note-gathering and editing tool. Here are five key features that make it so attractive:
- Note-taking functionality: OneNote offers excellent drag-and-drop features that allow you to insert snippets, pictures, diagrams, text and other information from a website into your notes. It auto-saves the notebooks. You can also use it to embed and synchronize audio and video files to your notes.
- Search: Its powerful search tool helps you find information quickly - whether it is the written word, text in pictures, or words in audio and video recordings. It even records the url of the original source for easy reference. Page tabs make it easy to go through, rearrange and search for pages in your notebooks.
- Sharing: Multiple people can work on a OneNote shared file simultaneously. The programme maintains a copy of the notebook on local computers, allowing you to work even when not connected to the network. Changes made by users are synchronized to ensure the shared notebook remains up-to-date.
- Outlook integration: Hassle-free integration with Outlook allows you to save tasks on Outlook, email notes directly from OneNote, share notebooks and mark notes with an Outlook task flag. This is synchronized with OneNote, a feature that lets you move between the two easily. OneNote pages can also be published as HTML pages.
- Screenshots: This nifty feature helps you capture sections of a webpage. Unlike the screen print option, here you don't need to save the page or crop it. Just select and pick the area you need and you are done!
OneNote also offers several other features, including customizable layout and design options, navigation history and note flags. Try it and you'll wonder how you managed without it for so long!
Follow the link below for keyboard shortcuts:
Saturday, 16 April 2011
The future of the internet
The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it
http://www.economist.com/node/16941635
Saturday, 26 March 2011
The future of lighting
What would you say to an idea of illumination which is easy to install, lasts much more, is economically viable, and uses a technology which is completely different from the conventional ways of generating light?
This might surprise you, but heat is not a by-product of light! That’s something that should particularly appeal to those who spend a fair bit on air-conditioning in their attempts to kill the heat generated by the red-hot filaments of their monster-sized lamps.
The lights of the future that we are taking about are light-emitting diodes or LEDs. The reason why LEDs don’t sound (they are not talking lights, we are!) like our conventional lights is because unlike an incandescent bulb where current causes a filament to heat up and emit light, LEDs produce light when current passes through a semi-conductor chip.
An LED is basically a small semi-conductor chip, often less than one millimetre square, located in a small bulb. When voltage is applied to the semi-conductor, it causes electrons to flow in the semi-conductor – a process that produces the light without the heat that conventional incandescent lamps generate.
An LED is basically a small semi-conductor chip, often less than one millimetre square, located in a small bulb. When voltage is applied to the semi-conductor, it causes electrons to flow in the semi-conductor – a process that produces the light without the heat that conventional incandescent lamps generate.
This tiny arrangement of a semiconductor chip with wires coming off it is supported by a lead frame. This package, neatly encapsulated in an epoxy or clear silicon, is a miniature light bulb.
There’s usually a little dome or lens of some sort as part of the package, but the whole thing is solid. That’s where the term solid-state lighting comes from.
Potent it may be, but we still need some more of these tiny pieces clustered together for a bright-enough light. The intensity and even the colour of the light can be changed. LEDs are small and sturdy and can be housed in flexible tiles, making it very easy to rearrange.
This arrangement is the light source that you get in the market. It could anything: a table lamp that lasts you a lifetime, a mood-lighting arrangement sans mood swings, a downright cool downlight or a floodlight that can weather any storm!
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Monday, 17 January 2011
Saturday, 8 January 2011
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