Sunday, March 28, 2010

Social Media

Social media is media that is broadcast through social interaction. It has changed how we broadcast traditional media in a huge way. Social media is appealing to big businesses and credible brands are using it as a form of advertisement. Social media is also being use by everyday people to share news about themselves to people within their network.
Social media has tremendous reach, it enables anyone to reach out to a global audience. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can have access to your post. Traditional media is owned by the publisher or by the government, however social media is available to everyone at little or no cost at all. Most social networking sites are free for anyone to signup. Social media is also instantaneously, there is no time lag between publishing and receiving. Also, social media can be edited by the publisher even it has been published, whereas traditional media cannot be edited once published.
Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo.
Web 3.0
Web 3.0 will be about semantic web, personalization, intelligent search and behavioral advertising. By opening up access to information, Web 3.0 applications can run on any device, computer, or mobile phone. Applications can be very fast and customizable. Unlike Web 2.0, where programs such as Facebook and MySpace exist in separate silos, Web 3.0 allows users to roam freely from database to database, program to program. Web 3.0 uses structured data records published to the Web in reusable and remote-queriable formats. XML technologies such as RDF Schema, OWL, SPARQL will make this possible by allowing information to be read across different programs across the web. Instead of searching the web and spending hours filtering the information we need, web 3.0 knows what we are looking for and searches the net for information then present to us the information that suites our needs.
Podcasting
To listen to a podcast:
1. Go to a podcasting site.
2. Click on the hyperlink for each podcast you want. You can listen right away on your computer (Windows, Mac and Linux support podcasting) or download the podcast to your portable media player.
3. You can also subscribe to one or more RSS feeds. Your podcasting software will check the RSS feeds regularly and automatically pull content that matches your playlist. When you dock your portable media player to your computer, it automatically updates with the latest content.
To create a podcast:
1. Plug a microphone into your computer
2. Install an audio recorder for Windows, Mac or Linux (free software for audio recorders includes Audacity, Record for All and Easy Recorder V5).
3. Create an audio file by making a recording (you can talk, sing or record music) and saving it to your computer.
4. Finally, upload the audio file to one of the podcasting sites

RSS
RSS stands for really simple syndication, it is a way to subscribe to a source of information such as a website and brief updates will be delivered to you. These sources are called feeds. When you subscribe, you'll get a feed -- often a series of headlines and brief summaries -- of all the articles published on that particular Web page. This lets you scan the articles on the page more efficiently. Sometimes you'll even spot more headlines that you might never have seen buried on the original page.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

E-commerce

10 reasons why e-commerce succeeded

1. People find it more convenient to shop online

2. There is a huge market for second hand items being sold online

3. People turn to the net when they are searching for niche products

4. People tend to do research about a product that they are interested online

5. Shopping online can be done at any time of the day

6. Businesses can reach out to customers from all over the world instead of locally

7. E-commerce has a very low startup and running cost

8. Businesses can provide more information about their services or products online

9. Online payment has become more secured nowadays

10. Businesses require less manpower for operation

Best e-commerce site

1. amazon.com

2. dell

3. apple store

4. IQVC

5. eBay

6. wine.com

7. carsdirect.com

8. onsale

9. dash.com

10. clinique

10 reasons why e-commerce fail

1. Poor advertising to drive traffic to website

2. Website is not updated regularly on new products

3. Website does not provide enough information on products

4. Poor pictures of products

5. No online support or help for customers

6. High shipping cost

7. Insecure way of online payment

8. Orders are limited to local purchase only

9. Hard to navigate website

10. Too many websites selling the same product

10 failed ecom website

1. Webvan.com

2. pets.com

3. kozmo

4. flooz.com

5. etoys.com

6. boo.com

7. mvp.com

8. go.com

9. kibu.com

10. govworks.com

How to make E-marketing a success.

Plan for success, develop a marketing plan. Plan how much money to invest on advertising and sofeware development.

Write down all the great things about you and your company and what you and your company has achieved. Use tools like email, blogs and search engines to broadcast this to the rest of the world.

Find all more about your clients by using surveys or find out their clicking habits. Use this info to direct more traffic to your website.

Make sure your website is hosted on a server with enough bandwidth to handle the traffic. Domain name must reflect on your company and not some random name.

Content is king on the web. Your site should have content to entice people to your web, however it should not be misleading as well.