Social networking is an effective marketing tool utilized by many B2B companies as a way to keep the customers updated on key business developments and periodical success stories. A closer and clearer look at social media as a marketing device reveals that it is more effective as a community than a mere communication idea. Most IT companies understand that the online community always begins as discussion threads and with the help of supportive forums. Real value from the customer rolls out from a deep engagement that is substantially relevant and inter-personal.
Recognition is valuable, and the capital that you have truly accrued to your online presence. Community building aspects of social media offer a powerful platform which provides real value to your customers and keeps them coming back for more. For building an effective online community your online experience must however include –
? Building Personal Profiles
This will give your customer a personal bonding and create a belonging with the community. His ability to project himself as he is will immediately help him connect with the surrounding. He will be able to find and communicate with like minded people, look around and desire to expand his horizons. He will be able to permanently retain his online ‘space’ in this gathering of people enriching the virtual space.
? Allow Creation of Different Groups
The community will be what you and the other members make of it. Being a part of it and involved in the growth process helps create strong bonds. These online groups have almost been useful ever since the birth of the internet. Over 270,000 distinct communities and forums were registered at the start of this decade. Different groups allow for the much required breathing space, and enable growth as communities within the community.
? Encourage and Allow Collaboration
Instead of building single communication threads which may collapse any moment without a trace, it would be meaningful to allow for collaboration among members at different levels. This inter-woven structure would withstand all kinds of virtual weather-storms that might affect the health and growth of the virtual community. Working together is not only easy, but it also enables build stronger and lasting platforms. Online saloons and discussion forums therefore must encourage and allow collaboration making inter-linking possible and gain on strength.
? A Rating System Encouraging Personal Recognition
Awarding has always been able to generate the requisite enthusiasm whenever effectively applied. An internal rating system among the members of groups will definitely boost and encourage wider participation.
Man has always been that social animal who has enjoyed meeting people, playing around, sharing jokes, stories, and has always been interested in one another. Online virtual communities will always prosper as an extension of this basic human nature.

Whenever Steve Ballmer talks, we all know it is Microsoft. The Microsoft CEO, will definitely not count his words while speaking about Microsoft.

So when Steve Ballmer, was questioned by Search Engine Land Editor in Chief,  Danny Sullivan, at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara, California, on March 2, 2010 , let’s see what the CEO, Microsoft talked on Microsoft’s Bing, Windows Phone, Twitter and Google.

Let’s look at what the gentleman, who knows to play his cards right, said.

Bing!

He certainly binged on ‘Bing ‘, the Microsoft’s decision engine.

Ballmer did not deny the possibility of association with apple, just kept it slightly glanced off by mentioning, “A Bing for iPhone search deal is still possible”.

He mentioned that Windows Phone 7 series, unveiled on Feb 15^th in Barcelona, Spain, will definitely use only Bing as the Search engine. It was not made clear whether the smart-phones running windows mobile 6.x would be upgradable to the new operating system.

He also stated that,” Microsoft isn’t interested — at least for now — in releasing a Bing application for Android phones.”

Raw Twitter posts, buried in Bing, will they come up?

On Microsoft’s association with Twitter, he swerved the question by mentioning that though the partnership with Twitter is great, they are not sure about acquiring it. He said that as an independent company, Twitter has lot of value and creditability.” Would they have that same credibility with the user community, if they were captive?” he questioned back.

Has Bing been improving its offerings, in an attempt to eat away at Google’s share?

When queried about what future he sees for Bing against competition, the big wheel said, “There’s no good answer to this question. If you say ‘yes,’ you sound arrogant. If you say ‘no,’ you sound like you are happy with second place.  No one aims to be second, so the answer is ‘yes’”.

When asked whether he believed Microsoft would eventually overthrow Google in search, Mr. Ballmer said, “I don’t know how old I will be when that’ll happen”.

Looks like Mr. Ballmer admits that Google dominates the search engines.

Stirring up trouble for Google in Europe through third parties,

When Danny Sullivian confronted him on the article by the Wall street Journal on Microsoft steering third parties to push against Google in terms of antitrust issues, the suave entrepreneur handled the question with ease. He admitted that Microsoft had been in discussions with antitrust regulators over its search-engine rival being scrutinized by a number of government agencies, ranging from the Federal Trade Commission to the Department of Justice.

The CEO certainly knows to make hay while the sun shines.

Unlike any other form of advertising, pay-per-click (PPC) requires a collaborative effort between different departments. Three groups are generally involved in an effective making of a PPC campaign. Content writers who will research for relevant keywords and, which will go to be included in the ads. The ad managers who will oversee the performance and relatives going into the bidding processes, and finally the developers who will help implement technical details like the tracking codes.

Content Management

To begin with, it would be ideal to separate content with search. The contextual listings, campaigns need to be viewed differently from search since the results and customers also differ in this online marketing scenario.

Eliminating unwanted and waste traffic is a necessity and essential step to lowering costs and improving conversions. Most major pay-per-click providers will let advertisers create lists of negative keywords, which would eventually reduce traffic. However, this amounts to the wasteful traffic which would have eaten into your purse without adding any conversions.

It is easy to get traffic, what with you standing on the right side of the first SERP. Persuading the visitor, however, to make a purchase is another story. It would be smarter if in some way the pay-per-click advertiser is able to weed out all unwanted traffic and pay only for those conversions he is able to make. It is very important to keep an eye on the costs per conversion. This will mean cost-per-conversion is more relevant for the advertiser than paying per click.

Ad-campaign Managers

One way to control spending, here is by adjusting bid amounts, and not daily budget spending. Very often the funds are simply not available and demanding; but, if the campaign is correctly optimized, the returns should justify any amounts of spending. Advertisers should carefully lower the bidding costs in order to reach the maximum number of target customers. Daily budget control based spending leaves a lot of prospective customers untapped.

Usually, the number one spot leads to a very poor return on investment. Mostly, traffic coming from the top positions are not buyers, but simply are researchers. Serious buyers will generally go to the third, fourth, or fifth positions. However, when the consumers are ready to buy, they will often come back.

Bid exact, use exact matching, eliminate researchers and go straight to buyers. The traffic will decrease, but conversion and online revenue should definitely increase. Double and triple the keywords by creating broad, exact and phrase matches for every keyword. Review the analytics, then gradually eliminate broad and phrase matches that generally result in lower conversion rates.

Analytics & Developers

A reliable analytics program is essential in managing a successful PPC campaign. It is the backbone of this marketing campaign, which will be able to determine many important factors. Analytics will enable you get costs per conversion rates, unwanted visitor data, negative keyword lists, figures relating to return on investments, and such other dependable analytical data.

Your PPC campaign has got all the ingredients to prove to be a breakthrough in your online marketing and advertising campaigns, provided you play a thorough and professional game. Careful analytics will highly compensate, and being innovative will help you effectively encounter any challenge.

Make no mistake. In the kind of ocean the world-wide-web is, it is essential that you learn to navigate if you do not want to get lost. Building a strategy for your online business is going to help you reach your destination easier and faster. In the absence of being strategic, most of these untargeted efforts would only prove to be a big waste of efforts, money and time. Not knowing your way, or the marks that you want to set are a huge disadvantage to begin with.

Looking strategically is big help

Strategy is a lot about how to think more holistically. It enables you to be innovative, lead teams while helping you deliver value tactically daily.  Shouting at people through television ads are actually days of the past when it comes to online marketing, and no more does this work like it used to. The consumers are really looking at different forms of consuming media, the social media scenario is a good example of this changing scenario.

Seeing what you would have otherwise missed

Normally, we are all on the ‘hit’ mode, and trying to work things out in order to generate value. We are constantly working out, planning and making our way through the thick and the thin of the day. Since we lose a strategic eye, there are a lot of instances, which come as glaring situations or opportunities that simply tend to pass by.

The big question is, when you are busy spinning the wheel and trying to get work done, are you really having the time to provide value to the organization?

You’ll miss the bus. This is why, being strategic gives you an opportunity to derive more of value in this marathon. This will mean, halting your daily grind, analyzing a consumer and finding what exactly are they looking for. Understanding the media and developing contacts with them, and giving them a clear picture of what your plans are all about. Looking at data to understand patterns, user behavior and other relevant feeds; this will mean that as a strategic thinker you are providing more value by increasing your customer list, and actively engaging, re-engaging and retaining customers.

Set aside time to think

Set aside time on a daily or weekly structure to think more holistically as a marketer should. Get to know what people really want from you. Marketing is not pushing or advertising products or services, it is about truly understanding what is important in a marketplace. It is a process of creating value in an industry which will eventually lead to obtaining customers and retaining them.

Take professional help

Consultants will be very helpful for strategically thinking over problems in any organization. Firstly, they provide a fresh set of eyes with a wide angled outlook for your business. They are capable and will be more objective about features, content and other aspects. They will externally analyze a business, an industry, and the customer, and suggest recommendations that you can implement.

Moreover, consultants are also tacticians who help alleviate your daily support needs. Whether it is managing communities, managing SEO or PPC campaigns and many other factor professionals can effectively address. The truth, however, is that they will be able to give you that free time, which you needed to think strategically. After all you know your business better than anyone  else ever can.

Your web strategy is crucial

Spend enough time developing your web strategy. It is very important to think strategically as businesses begin to evolve online. Understanding the growing online market is more important now than ever to make that difference which will set you apart. Your web strategy is what will chart your course and help you score for a long, long time.

Google is first, once again. Google Patents, this new search engine rolling out of Google’s index patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Built up from the original USPTO database, all the 7 million patents have been put up through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to enable them be searched. The Google Patent search is beginning right up from the year 1790, through to the middle of 2006. On the contrary, the original USPTO search site in starting from the year 1979, and moving forwards.

The scanning technology used by Google, here is far advanced than the USPTO search. This is how Google scores over the database search results. However, originally provided by the USPTO. Google was lucky in patenting this design for which he had applied in the year 2004, and which cleared the U. S. Patent & Trademark Office at the end of 2006. It is, however, still unpredictable if Google plans to use the patent to go after similar interfaces, aiming at the potential competitor targets on the internet.

The Patent office adds updates every week and which Google also expects to follow up. Google engineers have added a filter to the advanced search form which allows you to retrieve only issued patents or applications. Some problems still do persist with the search results, and which I am sure Google will soon sort them out.

The Google team is working hard day and night towards improving Google Patent Search and encourages viewers to send suggestions in helping them get better. As such, Google Patent Search at present is available in English version alone and covering only the U. S. Patents. Google, however, is looking forward to extending these products and services to users worldwide, and hoping to continue to expand the patent offices, they are able to cover, and also towards making other languages interface available.

Although, Google is sure on the top when compared with the others, it is amazing that their desire to excel stays intact, even if they have to simply outdo themselves