Social media harsh realities for any brand

When you are getting started in social media it is important to think carefully about what you as a business are looking to achieve and drive your activities from this, from a business-led social media strategy. Jumping straight to tools and hoping they will work for you often causes problems.

A second consideration should be what is possible with different tools and how you can use them in a way that truly benefits you. Working with any social media tool, just as with any marketing or communications tool needs proper thought. And with social media people often think you can put things up and wait for consumers to start ‘engaging’ with you. This almost always won’t happen. It is one of the myths of social media. You need to work hard to get engagement going.

These are some harsh realities and the myths that often exist about social media and timely for everybody to consider:

1. Nobody reads your blog unless the content is valuable and relevant, you have conversations and you build loyalty over time
2. Your Twitterstream is boring unless you make it interesting with content that is relevant to your target audience and have the right mix of personality and conversation
3. Your Facebook Fan Page will be empty unless you have valuable content, interaction and conversation there
4. Your new social networking site will not be used unless you have valuable and relevant content, give people a reason to engage and build audience diligently with good community management
5. Your great idea will not go viral unless your content is engaging and valuable and people really want to engage with you
6. Users will not generate content unless you make it easy, ensure there is something in it for users who are generating the content and facilitate this with good community management
7. Your employees will not help unless you enthuse, train, encourage and support them

Overall tools and technology are not the most important thing when any brand uses social media. Its your content and the people who manage and grow your activity who count!

B2B Lead Generation and Marketing Automation. Are they synonyms?

Today a lot of B2B companies are opting for marketing automation solutions. Makes good business sense, why lose out on those possible sales opportunities when you are doing everything possible to drive traffic to your website. But there is a serious problem, with the perception that is associated with using a marketing automation solution. For some reason, marketing automation on most occasions is mis-interpreted as a Lead generation solution.

When in reality, marketing automation is just a part of the Lead Generation process and not by any means the end.

As the name suggests marketing automation is about automating the marketing activities of any organization. So the automation of the repetitive marketing tasks results in increased efficiency in the organization. But this understanding has been many a times mis-interpreted to consider Lead Generation as part of the marketing automation process.

Such mis-interpretation has led B2B companies to spend precious dollars on a solution which actually only enables their marketing departments – because the sales teams couldn’t care less, they anyway consider most of the leads passed on by the marketing team as useless.

So is Marketing Automation a lost cause? Not if you see it as one of the means to your end objective – the lead generation process.The other two being - Website optimization and sales enablement

Website Optimization:

For any B2B company in today’s age where Internet dominates all channels of communication a good website can be critical to their business success. A website acts as the showcase window for the company and also, one which allows the company to engage its prospective customers in a very direct manner. Invariably it becomes the first point of contact between the prospect and the company and also the first point of the Lead generation process. Ensuring the company website meets the following requirements will go a long way in optimizing it for better lead generation.

Providing relevant content about the product

• Conveying the value proposition to hold interest of researchers on the website.
• Enabling the prospect to easily navigate to pages of interest
• Allow the prospects to easily trial or buy the product.

Marketing Automation:

Once you have optimized your website, its time to bring in the marketing automation guys. This solution will help you find leads on your website, it will sift through all your visitors to circle out those who might really be interested in your product. Also, it will help you automate the marketing process of reaching out to your prospects and keeping track of their responses – moving them up or down your sales probability scale.

The process of Lead generation does not end with finding interested prospects, but also includes the time and effort taken to nurture that lead till it is ready to buy your product. It is this process of Lead gathering, qualification and nurturing that marketing automation platforms help with. It makes the repetitive processes more efficient and tracking Lead progress easier.

The 3 most significant marketing processes the platform enables in the Lead generation process are -

• Customer Segementation
• Customer Data Integration
• Campaign Management

Sales Enablement:

The last node of the Lead generation process is also the most significant - sales enablement.

The Lead generation process will only be successful if all efforts put in by different people in the previous stages help the sales team understand and identify the context and intent of the sales opportunity at hand.

Marketing collaterals created should map and reflect the different levels of interests and inhibitions expressed by the lead during the nurturing process. It should also reflect the lead’s progress from a visitor looking for a solution to someone who is ready to buy the solution you offer.

Time plays a very significant role in making or breaking a sales deal. The other processes of lead generation cycle should be well equipped to identify a sale-ready or ‘hot’ lead from a lead that needs nurturing and inform the sales teams ensuring they connect with these leads in time. Triggering off alerts when opportunity strikes is something more advanced Marketing automation 2.0 solutions offer today, if the one your company uses does not it should be done manually to avoid loss of sale opportunities.

Either ways sales enablement is a process if ignored – it can kill the lead generation process much before it reaches a desired end. It should be ensured that all the data collected on the intent and interest of the lead should be accessible to the sales teams and should form the basis of their customized sales pitches.

It is these three functions that come together to make lead generation process a reality. The absence of any one of these functions can severely jeopardize the lead generation process and make your marketing automation platform ineffective.

Social Media ROI

So what? if,

"People are talking about your brand"

"You have a dashboard which shows pretty red, yellow, and green graphs"

"You've just paid a celebrity to tweet about You" 

Do any of these things drive sales for the brand? Maybe. Maybe not. Most likely there is simply no way to tell. This is because there isn't a metric or a series of metrics which can directly and accurately correlate social media actions to sales.

However, there are a few good examples where marketing activities in social networks can drive quantifiable value. For example, Dell has built up a following on Twitter over time so it can now tweet last minute deals and clear out unsold outlet inventory very efficiently. Netflix has built up a large fan base on Facebook and uses it to interact with fans, get feedback, and announce new features or content. JetBlue and Best Buy use Twitter for customer service and have thus built up a large enough following to use Twitter as a launch or awareness channel which is free, compared to other channels like e-mail or direct marketing.

The value derived from the above examples is replacement value - in other words, it can sufficiently and efficiently replace traditional, costly tactics such as market research, direct marketing, e-mail marketing, etc.

Let's dig a little deeper. The "social media marketing" craze of today is really the same as the "word of mouth marketing" craze of a few years ago. There are wrong ways of generating buzz; there are right ways of attracting buzz; and sometimes buzz is generated accidentally - for better or for worse. Word of mouth cannot be purchased or faked; it will be found out. Social media also cannot be controlled; people won't necessarily talk about the product the way the advertiser wants the product or brand to be talked about; and they certainly won't use "on brand" terminology, etc. Perception of the product or brand is ever more important because of its lasting effect in social media.

So how do we get at the ROI of social media?

Social marketing is not marketing - instead it is listening and learning from customers' genuine conversation among peers and earning the right to be part of the conversation by providing value and earning customers' trust. Companies should think of the longer-term "total value of ownership" for social media. Examples of the social media assets that are "owned" after longer-term investment may include fan pages on Facebook, followers on Twitter earned over time, collections of videos on YouTube, etc.

The return on these assets is derived over time and may not be attributable to any one marketing campaign. The ROI derived from these assets will come in the form of replacement value (e.g., you can tweet your launch announcements instead of paying for e-mail and direct marketing) and lasting value (e.g., customer reviews and candid discussions about a brand or product can live on in social media and benefit future potential customers when they go online to search, at no additional cost to the advertiser). 

Because the return is derived over time and is not easily attributable to any particular marketing campaign, social media should be thought of and executed at the corporate level - e.g., via corporate marketing - as opposed to brand marketing, which has a short-term view and specific revenue goals.

Nestle's Facebook Page: How a Company Can Really Screw Up Social Media

Like the Force, Facebook can be a powerful ally — but beware the Dark Side. This is a tale of how a big company can land itself in a PR nightmare in a matter of minutes, all thanks to the power of social media.

About 10 hours ago, Chocolate-maker Nestle posted a seemingly innocent request on its Facebook page: "Nestle fans, don’t use an altered version of the company’s logo as your profile pic, or your comments will be deleted".

The reaction from more than a few followers: "Don’t tell us what to do, Big Brother! 
Nestle’s response: "The logo is our intellectual property. This is our page, we set the rules. You don’t like it? There’s the door".

In other words, whoever mans Nestle’s Facebook page went on the offensive, responding to individual posters in a tone that was at times sarcastic or antagonistic. Here’s an exchange that pretty much sums it up:

The problem here isn’t the way Nestle is trying to police its Facebook page, though I think it’s important that PR people recognize that an altered company logo is a compliment (and a very common online practice), not intellectual-property theft.

The problem, obviously, is Nestle’s response to people who didn’t like the initial statement. It’s PR 101: Don’t insult your customers! And in PR 2010, mind your manners in public forums — especially those expressly created for fans of your company! It may be true that there’s no such thing as bad press, but there’s definitely bad social networking — and this is a prime example.

Any company that maintains a Facebook page should learn from Nestle’s mistake. In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see how the company responds once the higher-ups get wind of what’s happened.


What’s your take? Did Nestle screw up, or was the company right to assert its IP rights? Share your thoughts in the comments.

A Short Documentary on Google

We think of Google as a search engine but they are an advertising company. This short documentary on Google will give you a good idea of what Google is trying to do and how the different pieces fit together.

.

"They want to own the cables that deliver the Internet and also the electricity to power them."

Not every number or statistic that you see in the movie may be true but it is still a good recap of Google’s constantly growing list of products and features.

The movie originally aired on Australian TV show – Hungary Beast.
post appeared in digital inspiration.

Golden Rules of Social Media in 2010

As 2010 opens its doors, I wanted to take a look at my "Golden Rules of Social Media" to see if I could consolidate those rules into 3 or 4 actions we can take to work better in social media in the coming year.

So, here is how I'd consolidated those rules to the fundamental ideas about how we should be using social media tools and platforms in 2010:





Listen. The best way to start your journey in social networks and other social media platforms is to listen. Listen to the conversations already happening around you before you jump in to join them. Listen to the rhythm of discourse. Listen to the stream to make sure you understand. You will surely misstep if you do not listen.

Add Value. The term "value" is subjective, but once you have truly listened, you will be able to discern with relative certainty what is valuable to any given conversation or community. Can you add value to the conversation, not just an empty voice? Can you be a resource? A supporter? A cheerleader? An organizer? 
What is your social media value proposition?

Respond. If you are listening, you will hear when someone says something that begs your attention. You will hear when someone references you. You now have a door to enter the conversation. And if you'e listened thoughtfully and have something valuable to share, your participation will be welcome.

Be Real. Be yourself. Even if you are representing a company or brand and are using the "voice of the company" or "voice of the brand," you can still be human. Yes there is a time and place for automating a message, but learn when that’s appropriate. Be present. Be there. 





I hope you'll like these rules and will surely apply them in your social media engagement '10.


I would also like to invite you to consolidate your thought and put your most powerful social media lesson you've learned in 2009 that can be good advice to others!!

Death of a Salesman- Tiger Woods

Oh Tiger, what are you doing, man?

Tiger makes $100 million or more per year from endorsements - more the result of his personal brand than his golf swing. His brand transcends the sport. He is the Natural, and he gives youth to a sport that skews old in its demos. His squeaky clean image made him a no-brainer for marketers and ad agencies.

None of this really changed when he smashed his car driving down a residential streer he'd driven hundreds of times before or even because there was something fishy about the whole incident; it changed becasue he stonewalled.

In an era of social media, the table-stakes of branding are honesty, openness, and transparency. We all knew something happened, and we knew brand woods should talk about it, explain it, let us forgive him for it. And we probably would have forgiven him, but now we can't even consider that without smirking and thinking of him as fodder for Latterman's top 10 and tabloid headlines about "the back nine."

I'm not sure why a big brand like Tiger didn't have better brand management. Tiger didn't say anything for a few days and then blogged, "This is a private matter and i want to keep it that way.Although i understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible."

Tiger woods was the number one source of traffic to news sites in December, according to New York research firm.

Today, branding is about two-way loyalty; a consumer has a right to ask, "How will you show loyalty to me? I think the public would hae forgiven tiger's transgressions, but i don't think the public will completely forgive him for not voluntarily coming clean... for Tiger not showing loyalty back to his fan base.

Will he rebound?

Twitter SMS Arrives in India via Airtel.

If you are in India and an Airtel customer, the good news is that you can now send updates to your Twitter account from the mobile phone itself via SMS.

If you are not using an Airtel connection, there’s no reason to worry as the Twitter-Airtel deal is not exclusive and will probably end after a month. Here’s the official word:

"Twitter will be available in India on SMS only on the Airtel network. There is exclusivity for the same for 4 weeks, in which only Airtel consumers will be able to use the service on SMS across the nation. This period of exclusivity is something that we want to take advantage of and make sure that Brand Airtel can own the property Twitter in consumer mind space."

You save money because you don’t have to send an international SMS for using Twitter but the service is still expensive. Twitter doesn’t charge anything for sending updates but you’ll have to pay a buck to Airtel for every tweet that you send from the phone.

To stop getting Twitter updates on your mobile phone, just send OFF, STOP, or QUIT command from your mobile phone to 53000 or use “ON” to start again.

Social media. Measurement

Simply put, Social media refers to all the conversation and engagement that happen on networks and sites like facebook, myspace, twitter, blogspehere, youtube, flickle, messageboard, forums etc...

Since these conversations can have a big impact on your brand it becomes critical for a marketer to understand what people are talking about their brand/products etc. so that they can take appropriate action and help in creating and fostering a positive chatter about their brand.

Broadly, Social media measurement comes in two flavors

1. Measuring the conversation about your brand in Social media

2. Measuring the impact your own social media efforts

In this post i will talk about the first point " Measuring what conversation are happening about your brand".

I will have second post to discuss about second post.

1. Measuring the conversation about your brand in Social media.

Social media measurement is very different from measuring your own web site. You own your own website. You can measure interaction of your visitors with your website.

Social media happens with or without your active participation. It mostly happens outside the realms of your website such as conversation on twitter, blogs, forums, facebook etc.

Since you don't have any web analytics tool installed on these places it is hard to find out what's happening. Even if you had a web analytis tool installed you won't know what people are talking about. which is what you would like to know? This sort of information is not available from traditional web analytics tools like Omniture site Catalysts, WebTrends or Google Analytics.

/ Social Media Analytics Tools.

There are new breed of tools that help you monitor the Social buzz, these tools let you 'listen' into the conversation about your brand.

In these tools you specify a set of keywords that define your brand or are associated with your brand and then the tools do the rest.

They crawl the social media networks/sites and find all the mentions of the specified keywords and bring them back to you in nicely formatted reports.

/ What kind of information do these tools provide?

Most of these tools bring some flavor of the following information:

• Brand Mentions- Conversation about your brand/competitor/ industry (as specified by keyword). You get total mentions by day/week/month and also the ability to drill down a specific conversations.
• Brand Sentiment- What is the consumer sentiment towards your brand? are they positve, negative, neutral on your brand.
• Influencers- Who is talking about you? How influential are they and how many times have they talked about your brand.

Some of the Social media Analytics tools

Radian6

WebTrens. Powered by Radian6

Techrigy - SM2

Omniture. Integration with Twitter

Visible Technoloies

Biz360 Community Insights

Dow Jones Insights

Sentiment Metrics

JD Power web Intelligence

-webanalysis(dot)blogspot

Google wave - a new communication plateform for a new web.

Recently Google I/O keynote highlighted the power of HTML 5.0 to match functionality long experienced in desktop applications & announced an HTML 5.0 based application - still very much in the early stages of development - that represents a profound advance in the state of the art.

Lars and Jens (the original creators of Google Maps) took the stage to unveil their latest project, Google Wave.

It's perhaps no accident that this project, carried out secretly at Google's Sydney office over the past two years, had the code name Walkabout.

jens pointed out, Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?

Google Wave is a new communication service previewed today at Google I/O.

A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

The service seems to combine Gmail and Google Docs into an interesting free-form workspace that could be used to write documents collaboratively, plan events, play games or discuss a recent news.

A wave inbox looks much like an email inbox. But look to the right, and you can see how the replies are embedded right into the middle of the original message.

"In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content -- it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave to see how it evolved."

"Google promises that Google Wave will be available later this year".

For more information:

• http://wave.google.com the eventual home for Google Wave. For now a place to learn more and sign up to be notified when we launch
• http://code.google.com/apis/wave home for the API, documentation and sample code

Source- Youtube, Google wave, Mashable, Techcrunch, Google I/O.

Google Algorithm Exposed

The Google Algorithmic manner of ranking and serving relevant online and indexed documents to specific Google queries has been a mystery to many over the past decade, with search marketers and mathematicians working to expose the way Google ranks sites.

Here we look at two disciplines of figuring out the workings behind Google, and two concise calculations.

1. The Mathematical Interpretation of the Google Algorithm

... and that, in simple terms, is how you increase your ranking on search engines."

2. The Search Marketer’s Interpretation of the Google Algorithm

... this Google algo always works for me!"

Well, we don’t always need the $ in the equation, do we?

Google's Brandy Update

Like many smaller companies who run smaller websites was slightly affected by the Google "Brandy" (funniest name i heared so far) update. This update was pretty much nothing more than an added vote of confidence for larger more popular brands. Almost like a slight shove to the front of the line in the race for the best keyword phrases.

Recently Google's Matt Cutts talks about the update and as expected, he states that they aren't so much targetting brands as only certain elements were tweaked that gives this appearance. He also reiterates that it's only in certain query spaces that this is happening.

Matt put up a Vid to focuses on the 'Brandy' update.  have a look:

My take on all of this is the issue of semantics. Someone calls it an algorithm change while others are simply calling it a small update. The fact of the matter is that it makes absolutely no difference what you call it. Something changed!

It is pretty clear that some dial has been turned up or down and it seems like that dial is connected to characteristics shared by many big brand websites.

like, 

- for "airlines tickets" 

   spiceject, jetairways, goair, indigo 

   4 airlines recently began ranking for "airlines tickets".

- for "insurance & health insurance"

   sbi, mnyl, icici, lic, hdfc

   at least 60% of the first page of search results for insurace is owned by large national brands.

- for "watches"

   timex, maxima, titan

   3 watch brands jumped onto the first page of search results for watches.

Of course, we are not at the point yet that our psychological interpretation of a brand is being interpreted by Google. But there are clearly some factors that these brand websites have in a common and a couple of switches have been pulled and dials turned that use those signals to score results.

- Google is promoting brands for big money core category keywords.

So, Whats your take on this?

Future of Online Video

The future of Online Video looks bright.

There will be a growing number of opportunities of marketers in the online video space as the net and its technology evolves, and that’s really one place we’re headed now, besides the virtual online world.

You might have already seen this, but those of you who haven’t, I thought this was REALLY cool. This is a commercial called, “Dove Evolution”, a 75-second viral film created by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, was uploaded to YouTube on Oct. 6, 2006. Since than, it has been played more than 4 million times, got TV and Print media exposure, one of the most blogged about videos and more links than you can imagine. This was a campaign for real beauty for women and only cost about $50k to make! 4 million views and for $50k…good tradeoff?

Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com and Revision3.com, gave a very interesting presentation on what and where he thinks the online video advertising space is going. Now, he pointed out a major problem. There is no consensus in the industry as to what the standard should be to advertise in video (pre-roll, post-roll, etc.). Adelson displayed a video on the big screen as to how we can solve the problem of “annoying” the viewer, and suggested a great way to advertise in online video is…product placement IN the actual show, movie, commercial, etc. DiggNation podcast was also used as an example.

Adelson’s Example:

This video illustrated how to place a product, at the end of a show, without annoying the viewer and marketing the product or brand with more sense of reality and authenticity rather than a pop-up.

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

I admit it. The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror flicks.

But you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus don't even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration:

1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

Future of Search

Try not to think about this Post as a white paper; instead, use it as a jumping-off point for discussion. This post is based on a Vision. It answers questions, but also poses new ones. This kind of dialogue is healthy and valuable as we try to think of Creative ways to improve our Clients' visibility at Search Engines and their overall marketing objectives.

- ViVEK KURiYAL.

I have been involved in media and marketing my entire career in Optimizing and Advertising, both agency and Client side. But today, as the new media marketing STRATEGIST, I've never been more excited about the future of Advertising.

So, where does Search engine Marketing/Advertising go next?

Google is failing in its mission to make the world's information universally accessible by crawling the web. This isn't because ther's anything wrong with Google, Instead it's because crawling was a perfectly acceptable way to find and index web pages back in the ninties when only millions existed.

Today, Google itself is aware of a trillion URLs, but it stands no chance of crawling and indexing them in a timely fashion. What's more, those trillion URLs don't even represent the entire web - it's just what Google has discovered so far.

"a 5-inch-long rectangle with a long list of text results beneath it doesn't do much to help people make sense of the billions upon billions of unorganized bits of data in the world."

However, Google is almost blind to non-text content. And the vast amount of user-generated content, such as Video, Images, Audio and other file types are not so easily hadled or indexed. Nevertheless, we keep plugging in all kinds of alien-to-the-browser apps (like Flash) trying to turn browsers into something they were never meant to be. As a result we've made it harder for search engine crawlers to find, classify and index our stuff.

In addition, the invisible web still exists. Millions of pages are locked in databases or behind password-protected areas that crawlers are blocked from.

So what real use will the crawler serve in the future? Maybe it'll be a backfill for other methods of information retrieval on the internet?

The introduction of Google's Universal Search supports this assumption and proves that methods beyond the crawl are required to retrieve relevant information from the emerging structure of the web.

User-Generated Content analysis. Cross-Content analysis. Community analysis. Aggregate analysis. 

All of these must be taken into account to provide the most relevant results and richest end user experience.

Change is Coming... come back soon!