Twitter is fast changing the dynamics of communication. Its popularity and ease of use is being exploited by one and all. Twitter has come out of the social communication tool’s shadow and is now hogging the light of advertising and marketing managers.

Recently, number of posts on twitter has shown to affect Hollywood movie collections. Its certainty cannot be established, as movie goers do not depend on twitter for the review. Twitter itself is long away from establishing itself as an authorized media for reviews about product and services. At the best it is offering personal views; and it depends on the users to follow these or not. But one thing is certain that the trend is fast on the rise. The web is more user-friendly and always goes by the fellow users’ recommendations. So, you never know when the trend catches on like a virus and give advertisers and marketers a fever.

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Social media marketing has evolved itself and come to a stage where it can affect our world in a positive way. Over the years, the means and methods of communication have changed faster than we could imagine. From emails to social networking sites to twitter, the social media marketing has penetrated deeper not only amongst masses, but into our psyche as well.

These social media have made it possible to get in touch and send message in a blink of an eye. The speed and ease with which they facilitate networking are making it more popular and ever growing. You do not need to have knowledge of computers and networking to get hooked by these social media. It has wiped off all boundaries by allowing sharing of views, images and videos.

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In the past posts I have discussed about all major SEO factors. I have discussed approx all major factors which helps or effect while doing SEO. I got some comments about the post asking to discuss each factor in extended mode.

And it’s a good thing to discuss that. Experienced and skilled Search Engine Optimizer looks for each small and big things such as domain name, URls, Images, Hosting, Meta tags etc.

Here the first point is “Domain and URLs”. Domain name is the first impression for any business or website. Relevant and catchy domain names are easy to remember and so that to make a big brand like Google, Yahoo, Digg etc. A well defined domain name can provide tremendous advantage in getting top online position in Search Engines. There are many factors in Domains and URLs which can effect your Search Engine optimization.

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SEO known as search engine optimization is one of the well known marketing tools that enable the website to get listed at major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn. SEO involves link building, link exchange, and other methods which could lead to a higher rank at major search engines.
The process of increasing link popularity of a page by submitting your site on other domains is known as Link Building. When looking to increase the page rank of a website, using SEO link building services is one of the best options available. The amount of knowledge going into search engine optimization is quite vast and fast, and very few individuals can keep up with the constant changes. Using a link building service can help in getting all the latest advances in SEO, and also a higher page rank and more site traffic.

Link building ameliorates the popularity of your website in search engines. It means number of sites pointing towards your site. Search engines not only look at the numbers of sites pointing but also the quality of the sites. It is one of the most important factors for a website to be successful in the online world.

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You might be an advertising company or a website owner; you must be looking to get best online presence over the Internet if you wish to do business over Internet. And If you have good online presence over the Internet then there are huge chances to get a successful online business because majority of customers and even you and me login to Internet to perform a sell or a purchase.

And when it comes to online presence then there are thousand of methods to make your presence over the Internet. Some of these are SEO, Pay Per Click, Social Media Optimization, Text Advertising, Banner Advertising, Affiliates etc.

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RSS, CSS, SEO and Web 2.0… Confused? Perhaps you have already heard of these terms but you may still be wondering what they have to do with you. The quick answer to that question – as Steve Raubenstine President and CEO of  of NetObjects Inc tells John Taylor – is “quite a lot…”

Our increasingly competitive world with progressively more sophisticated means of communication has led to a condition amongst the general population of heightened expectations and shorter attention spans. This sharpened sense of anticipation at being entertained at every moment means that those brands or companies that fail to make an impact will lose customers. Fast.

In the world of web design, this means that just having a website is not enough. Now, it is an integral element of your communications that must continually compete with the vast array of other information on the Internet in an engaging, interactive or entertaining way. The WWW is saturated with millions of blogs, networking facilities and online shops that constantly vie for browser attention, consumer traffic and consistently high unique visitor figures.

For the small business, this level of competition can be daunting. With limited access to the big budgets needed to pay for online marketing campaigns and expensive web design consultancies, it can be difficult to create ‘traffic’, let alone hang on to visitors once they are on your site. There are, however, several ways to ensure that your online presence is worthwhile. I recently had a chance to talk to Steve Raubenstine Vice President of NetObjectsand ask him for his to give us his advice on building a small business website.

Looking The Part

For those businesses creating their own website, it is essential to ensure your website looks the part. That means doing the basics well, for example ensuring you have a professional looking template design with simple and effective site navigation. Your homepage needs to look appealing and contain the key information whilst not looking cluttered. Once on the site, guests need to be able to navigate easily and find the information they need quickly. If not, they’ll leave in an instant.

Think of your homepage as a shop window, designed with the intention of inviting customers through the front door. Make sure you keep the information as up to date as possible to avoid user frustration; present the information in a lucid and concise way with pictures, pricing or the ‘benefits’ clearly identified. This will help your visitors to find the information they need quickly, which in turn encourages a response, increases user ‘delight’ and improves the probability of a return visit.

A professional looking website is a sure way of projecting a genuine and trustworthy image, but what really counts is how you market your site to acquire and retain customers.

Marketing

Search Engine Optimisation is the term used to describe your site’s visibility on search engines such as Google. Whilst you can pay to have your site optimised there are several methods to do this yourself. Firstly, ensure your site is developed using clean, industry accepted code (Semantic XHTML); include lots of ‘key words’ in your script as this is what the search spiders are looking for when someone types an enquiry into the search engine; finally, try to link with lots of complementary partner sites to increase the chances of being seen.

Optimising your web site in this way should help to increase your traffic and unique visitor figures. At this point, if you’ve addressed some of the issues I referred to in ‘Looking the Part,’ you are on your way to turning that visitor into a customer. At that stage, you need to think about ways to retain those customers and encourage them to return. Email marketing is a way of telling your customers about new products, the latest offers and site updates. For this you will need their email address and authorisation as well as a database linked to your website to collect the information.

The next steps

There are many packages out there that can help make web design simple but prices and quality vary dramatically. Here are a few tips on the tools to look out for when looking to purchase a web design package:

WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) – This helps to simplify the process of web design and means you don’t have to learn the languages of web design (HTML, CSS, Java, Flash, etc.). What appears in your site editor is what will appear online.

Content management – Select a package that allows for simple content management. This will enable you to update your website so that users will always get the latest information.

Clean code (Semantic XHTML) – This is the industry recognised standard web code – cleaner code is more accessible and search engine friendly.

Capability levels – Buy a package that will ‘grow’ and offer advanced functionality as your skills increase. Beginners will want a WYSIWYG, drag and drop, wizard-driven environment whilst more advanced users may look for a built in coding environment and advanced tools.

Database integration – Your site will need to integrate with databases as you start to collect visitor data and customer contact details. This will also assist with your ongoing email marketing and RSS feeds. Look for one that offers data source XML binding.

E-commerce and site traffic tools – A strong online presence provides access to a worldwide market place for direct trading. If you’re looking to sell, you’ll need a package that can help with e-commerce and site traffic.

Golbal Presence – Companies like Host1plus can give your company a global presence by allowing you to choose where in the world the hosting of your site will be bringing you your site closer to your target market.

Additional components – A component framework suite can be used for easily adding photo galleries, Flash video content, forums, guest books and site maps, allowing users to interact with a site to increase their interest and improve ‘stickiness’ (making visitors want to return).

NetObjects Fusion 11 is a leading and award-winning website design application for both novice and experienced designers and developers. It has earned critical praise and worldwide recognition as one of the fastest, easiest ways to build, manage and update websites.

For further information about NetObjects and to try their web development software, visit www.NetObjects.com.

For most web-savvy users, RSS subscriptions are self-evident, like email or instant messaging. And for some, catching up with latest news and entertainment via RSS readers has become part of the daily routine. As effectiveness and time management are the bywords of the productive user, the question arises: how to use RSS effectively? In this article, I’ll try to give a simple and concise overview of what you can do to answer the question.

First of all, you need to sit back for a while and think what you’re really interested in and can spare time to read about. A list of topics or categories, so to say. This is harder than it sounds. After all, you are a creature of the internet, with horizons broader than that of an average bear. However, you can’t afford to read about everything from Astronomy to Zen. Unless you make a living reading RSS feeds, in which case, where can I apply? For the rest of us, priorities are very important.

Once you have decided on what you want to spend time reading about, you need to pick a reader. There are two main options: desktop and web. This Lifehacker article discusses the pros and cons of each, but what it’s really down to is personal preference and habit. If you’re an avid Google fan and your computer is perpetually online, you’ll probably pick Google Reader. If you’re not romantically involved with any big name and enjoy offline capabilities in an application, you might decide to go with any one of the several desktop readers (e.g. NewsGator suite or GreatNews). The possibilities are endless, really, and a well-configured, customized reader will greatly increase effectiveness. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Now, with the topics and reader chosen, it’s time to pick the feeds. This is a trial-and-error moment for most people. What you shouldn’t hesitate to do is to unsubscribe from feeds: inactive feeds, overly-active feeds, feeds of blogs and websites you don’t reallyenjoy, etc. Popular, large sites and blogs usually offer feeds for separate tags or topics, or Top Ten / Most Popular / Weekly / Biweekly / Monthly feeds, which, frankly, are a blessing. 100+ new articles a day from one feed alone is an intimidating sight.

With topics, reader, and feeds in place, you can increase effectiveness even more. One of the ways is even greater emphasis on priorities. Some readers, like Mac-only NetNewsWire lets you move folders up or down, depending on how important their content is. Another very helpful tip is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for your reader. Almost every major reader has them. That includes, but is not limited to: Google Reader, NetNewsWire, and FeedDemon.

Finally, don’t try to catch up. If you’ve come home after a week-long camping trip, just think about the fact that you’ve spent the last week in a far better manner than sitting in front of a screen reading your RSS feeds. If you’ve missed a few wonderful posts by accident, well, that’s just life.

For more great tips, you can read web worker daily article.

Blogging, blogging, blogging. Nowadays, it seems like everybody blogs. It should be simple then, shouldn’t it? Well, somehow most blogs die after a post or two…

What’s the matter? Well, it could be that people focus on their blog rather than on the blogging!

Most wannabe bloggers start by looking for a platform. They check out dozens of them. Once they settle on a particular platform, the tuning starts. Trying tons of shiny themes, installing billions of plugins and widgets… After a while, they finally write the legendary “Hello World” post. Sometimes, a second post gets published as well.

Isn’t this Blogging? No!

Blogging is about writing, not about outlook. The value of a blog is in its content. Visitors rarely come to look at a nice theme, seen in thousands of other blogs. However, they will stick to good content as bees to honey.

A good blog should be started way before a Blogger account is created. Since its heart is content, the first job should be to make Content. Just imagine that the blog already exists. Now, try to write few posts. By “post” I mean a real, long post, not some ‘Hello World’ quickie. That would let you feel the real blogging spirit.

Writing-before-launching helps to prevent many common problems in the field. First of all, it would let you make sure that you can write and enjoy it. Furthermore, you can test yourself if you have anything to say on a chosen topic. There’s nothing worse than running out of ideas after a few articles. Also, it will help you to post regularly from the start.

So, now you have a blog with a few nice posts and a dozen (or even more if you’re lucky) readers. What’s the next step? More good posts, some backlinks. It is more important what the next step should NOT be. One of the worst things that can happen to a blogger is the “Shiny-Thing” syndrome. Some people get into theming and installing widgets so much, that they literally don’t have time for actual blogging.

The best way to stay away from upgrading your blog to chaos is to have an unupgradeable blog! All those widgets and themes look so compelling, don’t they? But, hey, if it’s impossible to install them, you won’t even try. All while having much more time for actual blogging.

That’s why I love ultra simple weblog platforms like Posterous and Tubmlr. They simply won’t allow you to get distracted by shinyware. On the other hand, simple blogging tools give you all features that you’d ever really need – attaching media, accepting comments, gathering statistics and, well, writing.

Sometimes you may feel a little bit limited with such a small feature set. But in virtually all cases you won’t need anything else. If known companies and brands can use those platforms, so can you.

Get writing and enjoy real blogging!

[Image credit: Kristina B]

Social media gurus keep speaking about corporate blogs all the time — CEOs should have one or at least assign the task of running a blog to their subordinates. Great! But what should a CEO write about and how should they do it? These questions are not discussed widely. However, I have my own opinion about the corporate blogs I would like to share it with you.

First of all one should not concentrate one the text alone. Video converts much better than any text! A single picture can tell more than 15 tutorial pages. Writing articles also takes a lot of time. In many cases CEOs don’t even have time to write a paragraph, not to mention doing research and collecting data for a full article. It’s quite suspicious if a CEO can write a 2 pages post about their company, views, strategy, services, products, plans for the future; also answer readers’ questions, criticize the competitors, curse the government for the imperfect laws, analyze the industry, etc. Most likely such person is not a very good CEO and should probably seek a different career path.

CEO’s blog should be short, irregular, interesting, live and organic. How is this possible? It’s easy if you use a mini-blogging platform and a sharing bookmarklet – a special link in your browser’s bookmarks section, which can get the information from the page you are viewing.

A mini-blogging platform is almost the same as a blog, only it makes sharing the media much easier. Of course no one restricts you from writing a 5 pages-long article, but the name mini-blog implies that you should keep it simple and concise. In many cases mini-blogging is considered to be the same as micro-blogging (e.g. twitter). However, micro-blogging has a lot more limits. Text and comment length is limited, the links must be as short as possible, therefore a URL shortener is necessary. Other media cannot be embedded into the text. In other words, micro-blogging is a collection of different services and in most cases it is based on conversation. Mini-blog, however, is more of a discussion-based means of communication, where all kinds of media can be embedded easily. Whereas in regular blogs, one will usually need some HTML knowledge just to embed the video.

Company’s CEO should choose an easy to understand and manage tool with basic features, which would not take a lot of valuable CEO’s time. It takes some time to learn how to use a platform such as WordPress; there are way too many tools for twitter; while Tumblr seems to be the best option. It only takes a couple clicks to post some quotes from various websites and comment them or to post a video from YouTube. You can also easily integrate twitter stream.

There are many more nice and useful features on Tumblr to be mentioned. For example, Facebook application, iPhone app, mobile publishing via text message or email, desktop widget for Mac users. Voice post is also an incredible feature < you can call to an international phone number and leave a voice message. Tumblr also has a third party application directory full of useful tools.

Posterous and Publr are some of the known Tumblr competitors, but they do not have that many users probably due to the lack of features. One other thing to know about Tumblr is that they care about the content quality, so it is not advisable to try and sell your products or services on Tumblr blog, as you might get banned. Unless of course your content is in the language other than English.

The most important feature in mini-blogging platforms is the internal subscription to other users’ blogs (but you can also use RSS). Building the network of followers is very important, because they will be the ones to spread your information to their networks. Re-posting someone else’s posts is as easy as it is in Twitter, except you have many more possibilities.

CEO blogs should use services like Tumblr to save time while remaining interactive and innovative. There are other benefits of choosing Tumblr too.

Here are some of the companies that already chose Tumblr:

* Big Champagne Media Measurement
* Bickbot
* Wave Tribe

Judging from the amount of bad press cloud computing has received on the Internet you might be forgiven for thinking you should not touch anything associated with cloud computing.

Well, the truth is cloud computing is just a marketing term and marketing terms come and go. I remember when multimedia was the hottest thing in computing if you could add the term multimedia to your product it was sure to sell. Now multimedia is old hat.

Cloud computing is hot at this point. It is the collective term for when IT power, such as applications and connectivity, is delivered over the Internet as you need it, rather than stored locally on a desktop computer.

Seeing this as an opportunity for development, many companies both large and small have jumped on the band wagon. The list of these companies include (but is not limited to) Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.

What is it?

Cloud computing is a blanket name covering many web-based activities;

For example, Google Apps is a collection of web-based programs and file storage that can be accessed via a web browser. These applications are free and the software is stored on Google’s servers, which mean no installation is necessary.

To access the service, users log in to Google, to access their applications and files. All the applications in Google Apps work through a web browser. Users must have a Google account to use them.

Google Apps includes a customizable start page (iGoogle) and Google Sites (with web page creator). Also communication tools such as Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Calendar. Productivity tools are also included — with Google Docs you can create and edit text files, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Microsoft Office Live concentrates on giving you the tools to establish a web presence (design a website), plus a set of business applications in the form of a collection of password-protected lists, libraries, workspaces, and tools that help you collaborate with clients and co-workers. These applications can be customized to meet your needs.

An example of a how a smaller company has embraced cloud computing is Salesforce.com — this company has formed a strategic alliance with Google.

Salesforce has helped to alter the business software landscape by producing a web based contact management application. This application is a subscription-based service over the web and it completely eliminates the need for software. As part of the alliance, salesforce.com will be the first on-demand company to resell the Google AdWords platform, acting as an official distribution channel.

The Salesforce Platform, as the world’s first on-demand platform, enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful new on-demand applications that extends beyond CRM to deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy and The Business Web across the enterprise. The Salesforce Platform allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks.

Concerns have been raised about many aspects of cloud computing and some see cloud computing as bait to lure users into using free online applications, which will be turned into subscription based services at a later date.

Other concerns include the fact that you lose control of both your apps and your data. Some Internet doom mongers cite the fact that should you loss Internet access you not only loose your ability to use your applications but the ability to access your data as well.

For example, one area that could potentially benefit from the cloud computing concept is on line accounting. Sage and Mamut/MYOB both have Internet-ready versions of their applications that many small business need constant access to. They also need to keep control of their software updates allowing them to choose when updates are performed. The last thing you want is for your accounts system to stop working when you’re running your month-end accounts. Therefore, many accounts departments would put off updates until less sensitive time, with Internet based services you lose this control.

In practice it is very rare for companies as big as Google or Microsoft to experience outages. It does happen but you can be sure it will be fixed at lightning speed. If your computer goes down you would not have been able to access your information anyway. If your Internet connection goes down then this can be a problem and represents your biggest worry.

Other potential problems include loss of control. Because access rights are shared across the services, security relies on how carefully others protect their login credentials. Furthermore, it’s not impossible that at some point in the future these services will get hacked.

Where is it going?

Cloud computing potential out-ways the concerns about it. In a way it’s nothing new, many of us have been sharing data, and storing information, documents and photos online for many years. Server based tools have also been available for many years, for example, online virus checkers. I would argue that “Cloud Computing” is much more than marketing hype. It a useful and growing set of Internet based applications and services.

The advantages of cloud computing are that your data is not stored in a desk-bound computer. The data is stored on secure, backed up and disaster-proofed servers such as Host1Plus offers. These servers offer far more protection than your office could ever provide. Many of the applications are free and can grow as you grow, with many services offering premium paid for services.

For cloud computing to work, you need to make sure you have both local and Internet based file storage. Don”t abandon computer based applications just yet, and you need to monitor the market and should your current service provider start charging for what was a free service vote with your feet and move.