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 has just introduced Google Buzz a new Gmail based social sharing service, and if you are using Gmail, you are already a member. The Buzz like all Google products is loud and clear, which all other social media websites will closely be observing and devising strategies to counter this offensive. With Gmail, the most popular internet mailing service backing up the new products that Google is rolling out, there is hardly any challenge Yahoo, MSN or any other provider has to offer.

Add anything with Google and they not only start making sense, but are also able to create products and generate business. The internet advertising juggernaut Google has come up with Google Buzz now. Buzz will allow you ‘to start conversations about things that you find interesting, and be able to share updates, photos, videos and more.’ Things that you already have been doing all this time on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social media sites. However, Buzz insists that this is different. Like Todd Jackson, product manager for Gmail/Buzz says, “Our belief is that organizing the social information on the Web – finding relevance in the noise – has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve.”

So Buzz will now bring you the news, and keep the chatter low. This will be integrating right in your Gmail box directly and enable you find a new social graph with ease. Buzz will follow all the people that you already email, building from your current contact list. You will automatically be set up with feeds coming in from your contacts right in your Gmail inbox. This will enable Buzz bring millions of users from the start, simply creating by waking up and making an overnight heavyweight in social sharing.

Buzz comes with some of the best key features that will enable overcome competitor challenges and might also contribute to help reduce noise – like.

- Key feature #1: Auto-following

- Key feature #2: Rich, fast sharing experience

- Key feature #3: Public and private sharing

- Key feature #4: Inbox integration

- Key feature #5: Just the good stuff

Google Buzz users may also use their mobile phones and tag posts by location. Google is also going to be helping you find what, is the best thing that you can see. Buzz will recommend certain items that you may or may not wish to see. When you tell Buzz something is dull, the system will learn to keep that sort of update away from you.

So the next time you open your Gmail inbox, do not be surprised if you come up with a Google Buzz splash page.

Rock, Pop, Hip – Hop, or just Jazz – You Tube is opening up with this music band. Bent on giving you a wonderful time, this site will enable you get the best, in the easiest possible ways. Vevo is here to be, and just recently launched.

Rock On

Vevo is backed by You Tube, and is partnering with the Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, AT&T, and CBS Interactive Music Group. As of now Vevo is offering 14,500 videos from 5,000 plus artists for more than 20 genres. This interface is similar to Hulu with a dynamic banner promoting Vevo’s featured content.

The Channels section has a very interesting way to browse through content. “Hit List”, “VEVO Canada”, “Michael Jackson Legacy”, “This Is It”, and “Vevo Go Shows” are some of the prominent channels that we can find.

The playlist has a unique touch, allowing us to create, view and share our own custom playlists with up to 75 videos, and save them into our Vevo account. Simply arrange the order of videos on our play list by dragging and dropping them. Here we have our own user created playlist on Vevo.

Since this is a freshly launched site, and hence is having teething problems – but, like Vevo say’s “bear with them while they try to smooth everything out.”

Roll Call

A clean & easy to navigate interface; well organized content; and crisp looking, smooth playing videos; Vevo is giving us, what only Hulu was able to up till now. High quality videos that are very easy to use, our own custom created play-lists, and a space where we can view videos on demand, Vevo might just be on the way to replacing TV Music stations as the premier destination for music videos.

Finding the correct website, information or product on the ever expanding World Wide Web would have been a daunting task had the search engines not come to our rescue. All that these search engines want us to do, is to apply a simple logic and put a keyword for the search. Within a fraction of a second, Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) come up with thousands of matching results.
However, who has the patience and time to go around all the result links for information? Amazingly more than two-third net users never go beyond the first page that have approximately ten results per page. What does this signify? It means if you want the net users to visit your page or site, it must rank within the first ten. Only then your website has some chances to generate hits and traffic. In this regard, link-wheel building strategy is an effective tool to ensure that your website ends up at the top or at least on the first page, if not closer than that.
What is a link-wheel?
Link-wheel is a structural representation of a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technique that utilizes various web entities in order to drive more traffic to the target web site.
Parts of link-wheel
Hub: Your website is indeed a hub or the centre of your link wheel. Whatever link building activity we carry out, it is all concentrated towards making our website more popular.
Rim: Web 2.0 provides us the rim or circumference that enables us to revolve around our target site. Logically, like any mechanical device, this rim also enables us to keep in motion without moving out of hand.
Spokes: Web entities like hub pages, blogs, social networking sites, slide sharing, video sharing, bookmarking and all such other web properties give us the strength to make use of and manage this wheel, for our mutual benefits.
Other patterns
Horse shoe: It is an open ended link pattern, in which links are connected to each other but does not form a close loop. This sure will give us movement, but with a very restricted momentum.
Random links: This type of link building pattern does not follow any specific modem. The links are built at random from one site to other and are without any design. Chaos is here used as the ultimate design, and which may, or may not come so useful in time.
Layers of link-wheels
Number of layers in a link wheel will go on increasing with the number of Web2.0 properties we go on adding externally to the already existing links that we have, and, which may fatten-up like a tree trunk with time.
Link building is a very open chapter still, and new and innovative strategies can be adopted for optimizing results. So get on, open up your minds and make the most of this while there is time.
The sky is no limit really; it is only a vast & open space in time.

• Don’t ever be penny-wise and pound foolish. Realize from a logical perspective, the cheapest SEO might turn out to be very expensive. Different people have different goals and values, it definitely would be wiser, to be wise.
• A good SEO worth the price would also be advising you on other aspects of your site apart from the SEO. The good page in all respects is able to do much more than the http://www.copperbridgemedia.com/services/.
• Make sure that your SEO also has a good social built up network, since a SEO who knows only SEO, is not a very good SEO.

Signing Your SEO Contract

• Every good SEO will definitely have a few valuable testimonials to back up, and must sound like what they claim to have. The reputation of any SEO probably is all that they have.
• When you buy an SEO you are paying for their knowledge, efforts and guidance. When you hire a good SEO, he should be able to prove this with good results. Many to SEO professionals will not sign contracts since most search engines are constantly changing their algorithms.
• It is very uncommon for a good SEO to sign a one time contract for a specified fee. Access to their servers must be essentially desired; so be very careful, coz looking for a good SEO might find you ending up with a bad one.

Pay a Good Price for your SEO

• The most important determining factor controlling the price for a good SEO is the amount of competition for the given category. Like a Diamond, Mobile, Prozac or a Casino website would come with tremendous competition. These types of extreme categories should cost thousands and thousands of dollars, and a regular upkeep fee.
• Extremely competitive markets most likely would require ongoing SEO, and fee for sustaining. Most web-sites do not target to gain in such competitive environments, as these could be highly priced campaigns incorporating ongoing SEO as well. Normally, local shops/businesses could be priced starting with $1000 and sound reasonable.
• A good SEO would want to see your site before quoting a price, since there is a wide spectrum of opportunities on the web, and a good SEO gets to see most of them.
• Price alone is never a function for good quality, hiring any cheap SEO is definitely bad, for many reasons.