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  • Your Website is Your Digital Persona. Is Yours Worth Clicking?

    Today having a website is more than just a business imperative. You need to differentiate your website from that of your competitors. Your interface should be user friendly and at the same time it should be easy to maintain and upgrade. Having a robust site is very important since web security is of critical importance if you are really serious about scaling your business. You cannot take risks when it comes to web development. The world is going the digital way and you need to take cognizance of that.

    The first impression that your website gives is critical. It can make or break a deal for your website. So put your best foot forward. Have a website that is visually appealing and informative at the same time. According to statistics most visitors to your site will have decided in the first few seconds whether your website is worth spending time on or they ought to give it a pass.

    We can’t stress enough on how much content rules even in this day and age of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. You cannot have mediocre content and expect first class results. Give your users first class content and sooner than later you will see how it benefits your website.

    Functionality is a big issue with a lot of websites as webmasters do not think twice about the user experience. A website is a platform where people navigate depending on what they are seeking and if your website has broken links, insufficient information, lack of guidance then people will immediately move away from your site and that does not bode well for you.

    As far as usability is concerned keep your website simple. Have a good layout with links clearly marked with where they are supposed to lead you. See to it that your pages load fast and efficiently. That way navigation is not an issue for your users and you can rest assured that rich dividends will surely follow.

    You cannot have any quick fix solutions just because they are cheaper. When you are in for the long haul it will cost you dearly and we are not talking about the monetary cost here. How much are you willing to pay for a lost client? So you need to be discerning and have a studied approach.

    The recent hacking of the BBC website is a case in point. This shows how serious you need to be when it comes to online security. A website endeavor is not a one-time approach but a continuous process of finding out what works and what does not. You will have some new technology coming up and you need to incorporate that in your site. Only then will you be able to compete in this cut throat world.

    Mobile friendly_website

    Image Source

    Today the Internet is going mobile. Due to faster wireless connectivity and cheaper smart phones and tablets, a revolution is underway in the mobile domain. But not all companies have a website that is optimized for the mobile platform. There is a whole generation of young men and women who have accessed the Internet for the first time on a mobile device. Now that is the generation which is of particular interest to the digital marketers. They drive the bulk of sales for products and services in the cyber space. Google has just come up with an exclusive set of tools to help you make your site mobile-friendly. Your site’s mobile compatibility might even become a deciding factor in ranking your website in the Google search engine results page.

    Position² POV

    Different websites have different requirements and you cannot have a cookie-cutter approach. It is better to build your website from scratch since that way all the things will be personalized to your particular needs. Wherever possible do not make use of plug-ins and such other technologies. Now this might seem costly but then it is worth it when it comes to scaling your business and offering a better experience for your users.

    We have worked extensively with a gamut of industry verticals with respect to Web and Application Services. One of our recent works that is worth mentioning is a complete revamp of the website of a leading global information technology and outsourcing company headquartered in Bangalore. After we extensively worked on their website they got an exceptionally high rating in a record period of time from Acquia’s external scanning system. The site was evaluated with tests created by Drupal experts.

    Another recent example is our work on the website of an emerging enterprise cloud storage solutions provider. Here we helped transform their marketing infrastructure with a transition to Drupal for the website, an upgrade to the WordPress blog. This and a lot of other improvements gave the company a renewed capability to reach new customers and partners.

    You need to design, develop, maintain, migrate and optimize your website. Thus, having the backing of a firm which has extensive experience in all these is half the battle won. But still there is no room for complacency. The world of web technologies is changing at a very fast pace and you need to keep abreast of it at all times.

    Contact us to learn how we can transform your business now!

  • Facebook Starts Monitoring Promotional Pages

    One of the biggest disadvantages of the free Internet to a lay user is the way in which ads find their way to you. Now Facebook will begin to closely monitor organic Page posts. Depending on how ads are accepted by the user community, the social networking giant will tag the Pages and regulate their flow across Facebook.

    The ads in your News Feed are no doubt monitored but going forward Facebook will rigorously evaluate the promotional Pages of businesses, brands and organizations too. If a brand or a company is found to hard sell its products or services then Facebook will keep an eye on it. Overly promotional Pages will be given a thumbs down by the social networking giant. Such organizations which just want to indiscreetly sell to users will find themselves slowly but surely locked out of users’ News Feed going forward.

    Digital Marketers Need to Revamp their Organic Posts

    As a digital marketer you need to tread with caution. You have to offer a compelling reason for users to Like your Page rather than flooding their News Feed imploring them to Like you. You will have to seriously cut down on the number of Posts uploaded, events hosted, apps delivered and such other things which will be under Facebook’s scanner hence forth. If your content is skewed more towards marketing your brand by announcing fictitious contests, incredulous sweepstakes and duplicitous claims   then you better watch out. Thus you need to have a fresh look at your brand Page and give users such content which is high in quality rather than quantity.

    All this was revealed in a recent survey conducted by Facebook according to its official newsroom update. Users clearly wanted to see more posts from their friends and Pages that they cared about rather than just promotional content.

    Digital marketers would definitely want to compensate for lesser reach of their unpaid Posts with more paid ads even though Facebook is in no mood to increase the quantity of ads shown on its site. Thus this crackdown on organic Posts will no doubt jack up the prices of Facebook ads. As a consequence you have two options going forward, either make your organic Posts exceptionally good so that users will actually love to read and interact with it or be ready to pay higher for Facebook ads!

    How do you think this change in Facebook’s tack towards your brand Page is going to affect you as a digital marketer?

    Contact our experts to learn more now!

  • Facebook Updates Privacy Policy

    The social networking giant recently updated its privacy settings in order to give its users more say in what they want to do and how they want to be treated on Facebook. Interactive questions have been included in the Facebook policy statement like “What kinds of information do we collect?”, “How do we use this information?” and “How is this information shared?”As per the new update, Facebook will tell how they get your location information depending on the features you decide to use.

    You can get personalized information depending on where you are and what your friends are up to. Facebook offers you Privacy Basics tutorial which is a step by step guide on how to manage your information. The resources about the policies for advertisers and developers are available for all users’ perusal. Users can now buy products without leaving Facebook using the Buy button that is an undergoing test. Facebook is working on new ways to facilitate transactions and make it more secure and convenient at the same time.

    Digital Marketers can Now Target Better

    Facebook will be closely working with digital marketers in order to help deliver more targeted campaigns. People are delighted if as a digital marketer you can anticipate what they want to buy before they explicitly state it by their actions. This is where the social networking giant is going to help you in finding out who exactly is looking out for your products. Facebook will scrutinize how users socialize on its platform, understand their quirky shopping habits and create respective consumer personas. This can then be used by you to pitch your product for a more forceful upshot.

    Facebook may use cookies to learn more about the outcome of an ad served to a particular user. It can do this by verifying if the user made a purchase on the advertiser’s site or installed the advertising app, as the case may be. Even digital marketers partnering with Facebook will have the opportunity to use cookies and similar technologies to confirm if an ad was actually served on the social networking site. You can check how your ads are performing and even provide Facebook, tips on managing your ads better for a higher level of user interaction. There are even opportunities for retargeting users outside the realm of Facebook Services, courtesy of the far-reaching influence of the social networking giant.

    As a digital marketer how do you view these new Facebook updates? Contact our subject matter experts to learn more now.

  • How To Write A Killer Ad Copy and much more…| Best of the Week

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    How to Improve your Digital Marketing ROI Using Big Data
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    How to Write a Killer Ad Copy That Actually Sells
    Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is an effective way to jumpstart sales online. You can achieve hitherto unheard levels of targeting via this avenue with a perfect ad copy. Learn how to write an ad copy that rakes in profits in spades.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    Best of Week Video Best of the Week Video
    Watch this video anchored by Tim Schmoyer that elucidates how to make your B2B marketing videos perform their best.
    White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x
    Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

    • SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
    • Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
    • Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
    • How EVA benefits businesses.

    Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

    		 Know more about Enterprise Visibilty Accelerator(EVA)
    If you are reading this blog post via a RSS reader, please click here to subscribe.

  • How to Write a Killer Ad Copy That Actually Sells

    We live in a world full of enticing propositions. As a digital marketer garnering the undivided attention of your customers is a challenge. The online arena is a complete world within itself where attention spans are shrinking and novel ideas come in all shapes and sizes.

    What the digital world lacks in attention spans, it makes up for with more focused advertising. Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a very targeted form of advertising. Your audience is already primed to buy or wants to know more about the product that you are selling for purchase at a future date. This makes PPC advertising more predictable and you pay the search engine only when somebody clicks on your ad copy. So as a digital marketer you need to make the best of this chance to win over your customers.

    Writing ad copy within the character limits set by the search engine giants however needs practice. The online market is very lucrative and everybody is vying for the same target audience. Then how do you differentiate yourself from the competitor? It’s a tall order but is achievable if you stick to some fundamentals of writing a ‘killer ad copy’.

    • Understand the Audience
    • Use a Psychological Trigger
    • Use Keywords
    • Use Prices & Promotions
    • Use a Strong CTA
    • Differentiate
    • Make it Relevant to Landing Page.
    • Filter Clicks
    • Make it a Continual Process of Testing & Refining.

    Pointers for a Great Ad Copy

    You need to make the most of the character limit that is standardized by search engines. Using the keywords wherever possible makes a crucial difference. Keywords are easily identifiable and are tagged by the search engines. Keywords that are highlighted in the ad copy give you better visibility and improve click through rates.

    Use of trigger words like ‘you’, ‘free’, ‘cheap’ are bound to garner your ad copy more attention. Every purchase is innately perceived with risks but more so in the online world where there is no touch-and-feel factor that we are so used to in the brick and mortar world. Hence, use reassuring words that can soothe your customers and assuage their anxieties.

    Use qualifiers wherever possible in order to give people a better idea of what you are selling and in the process discouraging people who don’t qualify from clicking your ads. Differentiate yourself from the competition by highlighting your unique value proposition. It could be some great offer or something that can add value to your ad copy in a way that can give you the edge over your competitors. Your ad should be in consonance with the landing page that you are going to use to convert your impressions to sales.

    Ask questions in your ad copy wherever possible. This gets the audience more involved. A question with the word ‘you’ is bound to earn your ad copy more attention. People feel you are directly addressing them and that it is not just a phony attempt of enticing people. It makes an emotional connect and people are more likely to buy from you if they are emotionally driven to want your product.

    A Process of Constant Evolution & Improvement:

    Remember ad writing is not a onetime process. You need to continually monitor the status and tweak the ad copy depending on what works and what doesn’t. Hence, you need to have more than one ad copies so that you can always split test and improve your chances of getting better leads. Track your performance using analytics tools available online, the chief being Google Analytics, and incorporate the feedback to get better click through rates.

    Now you might think that the character constraint set by the search engines is stymieing your creativity, but the fact is that people might not even read your entire ad copy. They might just be scanning for some trigger words and your ad copy better have it if you want to convert to sales. You cannot escape the fact that people today are always in a hurry and do not have the luxury of time to look at your ads at leisure. You need to constantly improvise, adapt and overcome in this new era of digital marketing.

    It’s a brave new world out there with ever-changing rules. But you can still conquer it with a killer ad copy.

  • Facebook Updates News Feed Preferences

    Facebook wants its users to have a more customized experience on its platform. Until now you did not have a lot of freedom regarding the content that you could view in your Facebook News Feed. But going forward you can choose to unlink any piece of content in the News Piece from the person or entity that you are following.

    If you are interested only in sports and you are subscribed to BBC International news then you get all the news from BBC in your News Feed. But now you can unsubscribe the news categories that you seldom read thus helping you to get only what you want, which in this case is sports. People have shrinking attention spans and a lot of them multi-task while going through their News Feed. So it was only appropriate that Facebook came up with such an update in order to make the user’s task simpler. You don’t have to sift through all that irrelevant content anymore but peruse directly what interests you, going forward.

    This is also good news for digital marketers. It gives them a way to assess people’s interest depending on what they have chosen to include in their News Feed. Thus breaking free from the clutter, digital marketers can have a fresh shot at targeted campaigns directed towards their potential customers.

    Those who have great news content online will be rewarded since people will choose to go through their content. But if your content is mediocre then you better watch out since thanks to this feature you might get relegated to News Feed oblivion in no time. Visit Facebook Help Center to learn more.

    What does the just launched Facebook News Feed update mean to your digital marketing strategy?

    Contact our experts to find out.

  • Google Panda 4.1 – Implications & Learnings and much more…| Best of the Week

    This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.
    Content marketing efforts
    From the Position² Blog This Week:
    The Google Panda 4.1
    The Google Panda Algorithm 4.1 Update is upon us. This new update will punish plagiarized and poor quality content while at the same time rewarding unique, high quality content. Read this blog to learn more about the key takeaway.
    Top Stories this Week: Social Media
    Top Stories this Week: SEO, PPC and Digital Media
    Google tab manager Best of the Week Video
    Watch this video that sheds light on 2014 holiday online shopping trends. A must watch if you are a serious shopaholic and you love a good bargain.
    White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x
    Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

    • SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
    • Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
    • Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
    • How EVA benefits businesses.

    Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

    		 Know more about Enterprise Visibilty Accelerator(EVA)
    If you are reading this blog post via a RSS reader, please click here to subscribe.

  • Bing Crawls Non-responsive Mobile Sites

    The search engine Bing from the Microsoft Stable is going to affect the fledgling mobile SEO market in a more impactful way. Bing has launched a new set of mobile crawlers with BingBot Mobile User Agents in order to index mobile sites better and to offer more optimized results on the mobile platform.

    Bing recommends all webmasters to design responsive sites but unfortunately not everyone follows these recommendations. Hence Bing had to come up with a way to overcome the hurdle and give searchers a better mobile experience. Bing checks if your website is mobile compatible with this new set of mobile crawlers and offers the most optimized sites in the Bing mobile search results.

    That way Bing can differentiate how your website is viewed on the iPhone as compared to the Android platform or the desktop browser. Bing needs unrestricted access to your JavaScript and CSS files for better mobile optimization.

    This is good news to all digital marketers who had non-responsive albeit high quality mobile sites, since now their websites can rank higher in mobile search results too. If your site is mobile optimized then you can reap rich dividends courtesy of this new update from Bing.

  • Google Panda 4.1 – Implications & Learnings

    It’s now official, the new update to Panda is here. This follows Pierre Far’s post on Google+.

    Google Panda 4.1 – Position2 Blog

    This has been named Google Panda 4.1 as it comes close to about 4 months from when Google announced Panda 4.0. We at Position2 had shared our thoughts on Google Panda’s implications for SEO & we are now back to shed light on the implications & learnings from 4.1

    Implications of Panda 4.1

    As SearchMetrics’ SEO Visibility tool points out, this is a slow roll-out and will continue over the next few weeks. Google Panda 4.1 is expected to affect about 3-5% of search queries depending on geography.

    Taking a sneak preview at sites listed below, one thing is for sure – Panda 4.1 is in line with the previous updates and is intended at sites which have poor or plagiarized content. Typically, websites which do not produce their own content & re-publish content tops the list of losers.

    Domain-Losers   Before    After 

    Change(%)
    Yellow.com 16383   3413 -79%
    similarities.com 118771  25197 -79%
    free-coloring-pages.com 12268 296 -76%
    dwyer-inst.com 13225 3229 -76%
    issitedowwnrightnow.com 69354  18376 -74%
    updatestar.com 13232 3766 -71%
    office365.com 29365 8781 -70%
    findthebest.com 30848 93937 -70%
    homewyse.com 14161 441 -69%
    adlaide.edu.au 20351 6537 -68%

    Domain-Winners

    		 Before After Change(%)
    comdotgame.com 2632 38231 1353%
    hogkiat.com 132 68372 406%
    rd.com 8963 42916 379%
    babble.com 17209 71434 315%
    mediagames.net 6839 27876 308%
    hotelguides.com 8563 32957 285%
    yourtango.com 30624 109148 256%
    moreofit.com 6431 22864 256%
    celebritygossip.net 10727 38068 255%
    spoonful.com 2813 89573 218%

     

     

     

     

    Source:Forbes.com

    This is a classic case of how adherence to Google’s Guidelines is recognized & rewarded w.r.t. quality, original content. Other sites like simplyrecipes.com & Glamour.com have reaped benefits from this algorithm update.Whereas,sites with original quality content stand out to gain from these updates. Noteworthy to mention is Babble.com, which was one of the top losers with Panda 4.0, is now on the winner’s list.

    The overall conclusion here is that News, Content Sites & Portals which offer downloads emerge as clear-cut winners – thanks to original content again. On the other hand, websites which have lyrics, games & aggregator sites need to pay the penalty owing to re-published content which Google terms as “thin-content” sites.

    Learnings from Panda 4.1

    • Have a unique content strategy for your site. Make it as friendly to users.
    • Always have original, quality content on your site; forget content duplication.
    • Content updates should be periodic and should cater to latest happenings in the industry. Efforts should be to evolve as an industry “thought-leader”.
    • Be very careful when re-publishing content, always cite sources whenever required to share content.
    • Avoid guest-blogging, Google considers this as a spam technique.
    • Stick to social channels for content-syndication. Create content useful for your visitors e.g.: infographics, Quick facts, etc. Make your social platforms more engaging and audience friendly.

    Are you seeing any differences in your website performance over the past few weeks or if you are a target of content duplicity, check out for the same on your Webmaster Tool dashboard. Do let us know your comments in the section below.

    Make way for Panda 4.1 – Enjoy spam-free, superior content online!

  • IBM and Twitter Come Together in a Landmark Data Deal

    The technology and consulting giant IBM recently joined hands with the micro-blogging site Twitter. This partnership will peer into people-to-people communication and gather insightful leads from it. Today Twitter is one of the biggest social networking sites and IBM has been one of the legendary organizations of the computing world for a long time.

    IBM will offer Twitter access to its cloud-based tools like IBM Watson Analytics. The IBM Watson is a major artificial intelligence breakthrough that makes sense of users’ queries more like a human and less like a machine. You don’t program the IBM Watson, you just work with it. It has cognitive capabilities that will assist in making sense of the data hidden in tweets, texts, reports, articles, and studies which make up to 80% of the world’s data. A search engine cannot make sense of all that and this is where the IBM Watson edges out the competition.

    Hundreds of millions of consumers and business professionals are connected via Twitter. Any trend happening on this micro-blogging site is of particular interest to digital marketers. Thus, Twitter can be seen as a trend synthesizer. On the other hand IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform helps business clients enrich their business decisions. Now with this partnership a new hitherto unheard class of data emerges to assist business leaders worldwide.

    Twitter captures ideas, opinions and debates in the cyberspace. While attempts were long being made to make sense of this data, there did not exist a reasonable way to do it. IBM Watson now seems to be bridging that gap. It helps in detecting patterns, understand what people are expecting from brands so that digital marketers can react likewise. Digital marketers can now find out which marketing tactics work and which ones are a waste of company resources. It will offer new insights into industry-specific data to understand new market opportunities and partnerships. Enterprises can now unravel consumer behavior, know markets better and predict trends. Data professionals can now club Twitter data into IBM DataWorks™. Further IBM and Twitter have joined to create apps using IBM Watson Developer Cloud and IBM Bluemix that will help businesses in their marketing, finance and sales departments.

    Ginni Rometty, Chairman, President and Chief Executive of IBM, said: “Twitter provides a powerful new lens through which to look at the world – as both a platform for hundreds of millions of consumers and business professionals, and as a synthesizer of trends. This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data. This is the latest example of how IBM is reimagining work.”

    Dick Costolo, Chief Executive of Twitter, added: “When it comes to enterprise transformation, IBM is an undisputed global leader in enabling companies to take advantage of emerging technologies and platforms. This important partnership with IBM will change the way business decisions are made – from identifying emerging market opportunities to better engaging clients, partners and employees.”

    So how will this new marriage in the data world help you realize your business goals?

    Do share your thoughts.