Facebook and Social Media

Facebook and Social Media - The Next Marketing Opportunity

Marketing as an activity is all about reaching the right customers with the right products, and the result sought is delighted customers who are more than willing to open their purses wide enough to boost your revenues. For many years, marketers stalked their target customers through various means and by trying to get their message across to spread awareness about their wares.


Traditional Means of Communication

Traditionally, marketing communications were conducted via print, broadcast and such traditional media through disruptive advertising, where advertisements appear in between the content of interest for the customer.

Traditional media does give a large reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wastage is equally high, since a large portion of the audience would belong to a different segment than the one that is to be targeted by the marketer.

Enter Social Media and the Internet

The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place because of the fact that it is highly personalized and provides more content on-demand than any other available medium. Social sites proliferated far and wide in their usage for a few simple reasons:

The power to create and distribute content is equally available to every user, irrespective of him/her being a customer or a marketer. In the earlier forms of media, that power rested with the editorial staff of the channel or the advertiser, but hardly ever with the user.
The medium is completely personalized, and a user can create or join groups and further create content based on what he/she likes.
Opinions are free and fair. This is one reason why social media is of utmost concern to marketers, since buying decisions are no more influenced as much by advertisements. The traditional word-of-mouth marketing approach has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.


Facebook – At the Center of Social Media

With 500 million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site in terms of activity and subscriptions. What started as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now become the biggest phenomenon on the internet.

A user interface that allows for quick communication and the ability to create fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the wide variety of social applications that have been developed and made available within the Facebook environment.

These applications can allow users and friends to do joint activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing photos, videos, and web links, and many more.


How does this help a marketer?

Traditionally, media plans were drawn to include television channels, publications, or any other media that can grab maximum eyeballs and effectively reach a selected target audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more accurate in the case of social media.

Facebook provides a wide variety of avenues to communicate with the audience, which opens up an entirely different world of possibilities to have a fruitful dialogue with customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:

Advertising: The first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is advertising on Facebook. The difference, however, is the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes and also specify the details of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to appear.
Fan Pages: Facebook allows every brand, as well as individual users, to create fan pages for their favorite celebrities and their own homegrown businesses. Large brands have also created their official pages on Facebook that have a huge, immediate fan following around the world. The fan page has immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect immediate and frank feedback from your customers.
Branded applications: One of the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by creating an application; this could be a game or a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.

What makes Facebook even more exciting is the way it allows you to target your communication sharply just to the customer segment you want to attract. It also provides analytics and page insights that give good feedback and measurement on the activity done.

The options provided by Facebook can be creatively explored and used judiciously for bringing about maximum benefits to any brand.

Read more: http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/facebook-and-social-media-the-next-marketing-opportunity-3298950.html#ixzz3hwhqLR5Q
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Google phases out support for IE6

Google has begun to remove support for Internet Explorer 6 browser, the weakest link in a cyber attack on the search engine.

The company said that since March 1, some services, like Google Docs, would not work "properly" with the browser.

We recommend upgrading individuals and businesses "as soon as possible."

Google threatened to leave the Chinese market following the "sophisticated and targeted" attacks, which he said originated in China.

Hackers used a bug in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) browser to the target Gmail accounts from human rights activists in China.

Panama: Real Estate

Before learning about what the Panama real estate industry has in store for investors , let us first check on the many benefits of investing in a real estate property in the country.


The economy in this Central American country is growing strong.This is just one of the many reasons why investing in a Panama property is something that is deemed financially viable.

The Panama real estate property scene is continuing to grow. The Panama property or real estate properties along the coastlines are still being developed in an off-plan resort style community. This means that the individual real estate properties are aimed at not just the temporary international tourist market, but also for foreigners who are looking at a more long-time investment.

Finally, investing in the Panama real estate industry will give you real value for your money. The low value of the American dollar in the worldwide currency market makes it more effective for an investor to purchase an off-shore real estate property such as the ones in Panama – while getting it at half the value of what you would have paid for the same property within the US.

Importance of Background Check

In the United States, people also do background checks for those people who are wishing to purchase handguns from licensed firearms dealers. It is also done especially for people who want to purchase restricted firearms like machine guns, suppressors, explosives, or large quantities of precursor chemicals and concealed weapon permits. It is also needed for people who want to work in a position with special security concerns like trucking, ports of entry, and airline transportation.

Information for background check can depend on the reason for which it is conducted. So a person who is seeking employment at a minimum wage job would be subjected to fewer requirements than a person applying to work for the FBI. Information from this check can include criminal records, citizenship or immigration or legal working status, litigation records, driving or vehicle records, drug tests, education records, employment records, financial information, licensing records, mental or medical or physiological evaluation records, military records, social security number, travel records and other interpersonal interviews.

Unfortunately, this information can sometimes be used for illegal purposes like unlawful discrimination or employment discrimination, identity theft and violation of privacy. There are also controversies on drug test and credit checks for employment. There are also some people who are uncomfortable with the idea of investigators poking around in their personal histories. This is because background checks can give information that is not relevant, taken out of context or just plain wrong. Thus, though this can be beneficial, it also has some disadvantages.

North American publishers: Participate in AdSense email Interview Get $50

Adsense recently started conducting email interviews. Interviews are currently available only to publishers located in North America, but we're aiming to expand this program to other countries in the future.

If you're located in North America, you can sign up for a chance to participate in an email interview and openly discuss your opinions about AdSense with a market researcher. Participants will receive a $50 AdWords credit for their time.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFZaVXNaYkdHUjkxQnNYOGZQQkRmWFE6MA

Reasons for Divorce

ADULTERY
It will come as no surprise that adultery is an extremely common reason for divorce. However, research shows that many people are wiling to forgive someone for cheating once. If the behaviour is common though, that often spells the end of a marriage. Adultery results in a lack of trust within a relationship.

DESERTION
There are times when one half of a married couple will up stick and walk away, possible with the other person unaware that the marriage was on the rocks in the first place.

ADDICTION
If someone is addicted to alcohol or drugs then it will inevitably have a major affect on his/her marriage. Addiction takes control of someone and means they are unlikely to function normally, resulting in them being difficult to live with and a whole host of other issues.

ABUSE
Abusive relationships are a lot more common that most people think. Most of the time they involve a man abusing his wife, but there are also many cases where it is the other way around. Abuse isn’t just physical, it can also be emotional.

PERSONAL DIFFERENCES
Different personalities and lifestyle ambitions is high on the list of reasons for divorce. There can be many reasons for this. Although opposites can attract, if a married couple are very different to each other, this can eventually become problematic. Different ideas of the lifestyle they want to live, and how they see marriage can be a major issue.

WORK
If one person is always at work and a couple never see each other, this can be a cause of friction. If one is being made to feel like they are less important than the others work they may feel unwanted. Differences in career goals can also be an area of strain.

FRIENDS & FAMILY
Although friends and family shouldn’t really have an affect on a marriage, they do have an affect on your life and this can have a direct impact on the marriage. For example, if a man is too busy spending time in the pub with his friends to spend time at home with his wife, she may become disenchanted. If someone doesn’t get on with their husband or wife’s family there will inevitably be problems.

CUTURE
If two members of a marriage are from different cultures it can be difficult to adapt. They may have to change their lifestyle to suit the other person and this can be difficult. Religion also comes into it. Someone’s religion can have a big impact on their life, and if a couple have different religious beliefs there can be issues around this.

FINANCE
Finance, and especially financial difficulties can have a massive impact on a marriage. This can particularly be the case if one feels that the other has made financial mistakes which they then have to deal with together. Guilt can also be a factor here; with one feeling guilty that they have caused these problems, and maybe not wanting to tell the other therefore making things worse when they eventually find out.

LACK OF COMMUNICATION
In many ways lack of communication isn’t the cause of problems in the first place, but it means problems can’t be resolved. If a couple don’t talk about their issues they are likely to escalate.
CHILDRENS

Now offering AdSense in Google Sites

As an AdSense publisher, you manage and develop websites. Google Sitesis a free product that simplifies the process of creating secure groupwebsites, whether you're building a family website or a companyintranet. You can publish pages with the click of a button, edit webpages like documents, and add videos, presentations, and calendars toyour pages. Information is stored securely online, and you decide whocan edit or view the site. And now, with a recent integration, you canplace AdSense ads on Google Sites to earn money.

If you're new to Google Sites, we encourage you to take it for a testdrive today at http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html. After you've built out your site and ensured that it complies withour program policies, follow the instructions athttp://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/answer.py?answer=150360 to addAdSense to your pages.

You'll have the option to place ads in the sidebar as well as the maincontent of each page, and you can choose the formats that work bestfor your site. If you're not sure where to start, we encourage you tocheck out our optimization tips at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/static.py?page=tips.htmlto make sure you're maximizing your site's revenue.

For more information about getting started with Google Sites, watchthis
video:

Attracting more visitors with content and community-Adsense

Jack Herrick, the founder ofwikiHow.com, about attracting new visitors to your site. As we sharemore tips over the next two weeks about increasing your revenuepotential and attracting more advertiser budget, we hope you'll leavecomments with your own suggestions for growing your business. You canalso follow the series at www.google.com/ads/speedingup.


Jack Herrick is the founder of wikiHow, a collaborative writingproject to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual.wikiHow is a wiki, which means that any visitor to the site can createor edit wikiHow articles. wikiHow is currently ranked as the 100thmost popular site on the web by Quantcast, and receives over 16million unique visitors each month. Today, Jack shares three of hisfavorite tips to attract visitors. We hope they'll help you come upwith new ways to entice visitors to your sites as well.

Video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giNdyLY46Mo

Generate revenue from mobile applications-Inside Adsense

Google launched new beta launch of AdSense for mobile applications. You can generate revenue from mobile applications.Participants in the beta will be able to display text and image ads in their mobile applications to earn revenue. We've seen positive results in our trials, and we're excited to roll this out to new developers to continue supporting the growth of mobile applications.

You can visit our new microsite to learn more about AdSense for mobile applications, see our beta requirements, or sign up. If you're selected to participate in the beta, we'll be in touch with you shortly with next steps for getting started.


You can also learn more about the program by watching the video below, in which Howard Steinberg, Director of Business Development at Urbanspoon, describes how he tested AdSense for mobile applications:

Adsense-Default font size increased

As a follow-up to last week's launch of font size controls, we'd like to let you know that we've just increased the default font size for AdSense ad units. This change will affect your ad units if you haven't yet customized your font sizes, or if your ad units are set to 'AdSense default font size' -- you'll notice that the text in your ad units is now the equivalent of 'medium' instead of 'small'. We decided to make this change based on publisher feedback and our testing, which showed that this increased font size improved performance.

If you'd like to change the font size in your ad units, you can do so on an account-wide basis or by individual ad unit -- just follow the instructions listed in our Help Center. Again, we recommend testing these new font size options with your existing customizations to determine which combinations perform best on your pages.

Local currency reports for nine more countries-Adsense

Following our launch of Euro reporting for publishers in five European countries, we're happy to announce that local currency reports are now also available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Portugal, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK.

If you're located in one of these countries, you can now update your account to display earnings in your local currency. After you've updated your account, any earnings generated from advertisers paying in currencies other than your local currency will be converted daily. If you receive payments in your local currency, this means that there also won't be any additional conversions at the end of the month. However, you can still choose to receive payments in U.S. Dollars or change your payment method at any time.

Before enabling local currency reports in your account, we recommend downloading and saving copies of your past reports in U.S. Dollars for your records. You can then update your account by signing in to AdSense and clicking the link in the green prompt on your Reports Overview page. You'll be asked to review and agree to a new set of Terms and Conditions. Unfortunately, we're not able to interpret the meaning of changes in our legal documents for publishers -- if you have questions or need legal advice on interpreting the new Terms, please don't hesitate to contact your attorney.

We'll be requiring this change in the future, so we recommend updating your account to report earnings in your local currency soon. You can find answers to common FAQs associated with these new local currency reports in a recent Inside AdSense blog post -- all references to 'Euros' in the post now also apply to your local currency. In addition, detailed information about these new reports can be found in our Help Center.

Top ten myths about Google Analytics

All publishers can now integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics. If you're not very familiar with Analytics yet, you might be interested in reading a recent post on the Analytics blog that addresses ten common myths about the product. For example, did you know that you can use Analytics to segment visitor data in real time, or that you can use the new Analytics API to tie your website data to your financials? Check out the post to learn more about these features and other ways you can use Analytics to better understand your site stats.


If you haven't yet linked your AdSense account with Analytics, follow these steps:


1.Sign in to AdSense.
2.Click the link that says "Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics" on your Reports Overview page.
3.Follow the onscreen instructions, and watch our video for additional guidance.

Image ads join link units-Adsense

If you use link units, you may have noticed a small addition to the page users see after clicking a link unit topic. We recently added an image ad to the bottom of each of these pages, after our testing showed revenue improvements for many publishers.

These image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads. If no image ads are available for the given topic, we'll only show the original text ads -- in other words, we won't show a PSA or insert a blank space in place of the image ad in this case. Advertisers can bid on these image ads on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, so you'll generate earnings for valid clicks and impressions. You can review the performance of image ads on your link unit pages by generating a link unit report on your Advanced Reports page.

If you aren't using link units on your pages, we encourage you to give them a try. They don't take up much space and can help add to your AdSense revenue -- learn more in our Help Center, or visit your AdSense Setup tab and select 'AdSense for content' to get started.

Blogging Helps You Get Better Search Engine Results

Here are some reasons why and how blogging helps greatly in
getting better search engine results.

1- Frequent Updates whenever Needed

Before blogs were popular, webmasters would have to manually edit
their site just to keep their content fresh. This takes time to do and
when things become repetitive, site updates become inconsistent which
is not good if you want good search engine results. With a blogging
platform, you can easily make updates to your site just by posting new
content that will append to your homepage.

2 - More Content means more Pages Indexed

The nice thing about blogging is that all of the entries stick there
unless you really want to delete them which is not recommended. For
example, if you blog consistently every day for one straight month,
you will have at least 30 entries that can all be indexed by the
search engine. In the long run, many of your most popular read entries
can hit the top search results and it can even be better if your
articles are uniquely written.

3- Improved SEO

Even if you aren’t very conscious about search engine optimization,
you will definitely have more search results if you keep your articles
unique. If you have a broader range of topics to cover, your site may
show up when different keyword phrases are being used. If you utilize
content writing skills and be focused on certain keywords per blog
entry, you can increase your site’s rank on that keyword or let your
site appear on more keyword phrases.

4- Link Baiting is there to Help

Some blog posts can be so well written and entertaining that other
blogs and sites would make a link to it. This should not only greatly
increase the traffic on your website, but also generate you more
search engine results because those pages that show your link can be
listed as well.

How To Get A High-Paying MBA Job!!!

MBA from any of the MBA Colleges in India or for that matter any of the prominent B-Schools in India such as the IIMs, (Indian Institute of Management), XLRI, UnitedWorld or IIFM is simply not enough to get that six-figure salary you had been aiming at since graduation. An MBA in Ahmedabad or an MBA in Kolkata has the same chances of netting a high-paying MBA-arena job as an MBA student based in Canada or Australia. Because of the importance that Indian B-Schools have in the global perspective, the prospects of an MBA in Mumbai or any other respectable MBA College in India almost guarantees a good job. But apart from performing well and getting placed with the best of firms, an MBA student has to keep certain things in mind if he wishes a more posh work environment!

MBA should be pursued from a reputed and certified university only. Be it classroom education or in online correspondence, one should not make the mistake of giving monetary considerations and locations a preference over quality. Half the war is won with a good degree from an equally good institute. On the contrary, an uncertified MBA will not only drain your money out, but will also undermine your personal responsibility and trustworthiness in the current work environs.

Get a great resume ready for yourself. You can have it written professionally or can develop it with tips from different online portals or professionals from the industry itself. Reference letters and testimonials from your institute's faculty members or experienced professionals from the industry (such as the manager level guys in the company you have interned in) will also help you stand in good stead. Next have your personality and appearance tweaked to perfection. Most large organizations look for creative, able and pleasant looking people who can uplift their corporate image along with their quality of work.

The Processing of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is progressions of deciding the most suitable focused keyword expressions linked to your site and certify that this position your site highly in search engines so that when somebody look for precise phrase it places your site on top.
It essentially entails fine alteration of the substance of your site with the HTML and Meta tags and also entails suitable link structure development. The most accepted search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves.

What the Display Ad Builder means for publishers

It is easier for advertisers to show display ads on the content network -- which benefits you, because it results in more budgets devoted to advertising on AdSense sites like yours. (As a reminder, "display ads" include all types of image-based ads, such as banners, rich media, and video ads.) In addition to recent launches such as DoubleClick Studio, third-party ad serving, and expandable rich media ads, we also launched the AdWords Display Ad Builder last October. This tool allows AdWords advertisers to create display ads using customizable templates and to target them to AdSense sites in a matter of minutes.


Since its launch, the Display Ad Builder has been extended to advertisers in over 100 countries and 40 languages. With over 90 customizable templates and thousands of active users of all sizes, the Display Ad Builder has quickly become what we believe is the largest platform for self-serve display ad creation on the web. Its usage varies from the largest digital agency, like Razorfish, to smaller advertisers like the Wilshire Grand Los Angeles. We'd like to take a few minutes to tell you more about the impact of this tool and how it can benefit you as a publisher:-

More advertisers creating display ads: In just six months, the Display Ad Builder has significantly increased the number of AdWords advertisers using image-based ads. Many of these advertisers were already advertising with text ads on Google.com and AdSense sites, but have now found the visual elements, interactivity, and animations of display ads to be effective at increasing clicks, conversions, and overall ROI.

Higher quality, more relevant display ads for your site: With simplified display ad creation now available to advertisers of all sizes and industries, the display ads that show on your site are likely to be even more relevant to your content and audience. For sites with niche content or with an advertiser base that would be less likely to have the budgets to invest in display ad creation, this is especially true. The templates that we offer also vary well beyond simple static banners, including interactive rich media templates that allow users to scroll between or roll over multiple product images, in addition to multiple templates with animated text and images.

Higher potential earnings: As the reach of ads created with Display Ad Builder grows, we've seen encouraging results -- ads created with the Display Ad Builder have average click-through rates that outperform industry averages. We believe that this is due to the combination of advanced contextual targeting on AdSense, combined with templates that encourage best practices in effective display ad creation. We've also heard from many advertisers that they're finding improved cost per conversion efficiencies with the tool, meaning that more of their marketing budgets can be effectively deployed online, on your sites.

http://mydzo.blogspot.com/search/label/ADSENSE

AdSense Optimization Webinar

Google Adsense next Optimization Webinar , where google group show you how to experiment with different formats and colors to improve the performance of your ads. Google group heard that you'd like us to hold our webinars at different times of the day, and we hope that this helps accommodate those of you who weren't able to attend our last optimization webinar. Remember, they only able to accommodate a maximum of 500 publishers, so please sign up soon.

Date: Thursday May 7, 2009
Time: 6:30 pm PDT (GMT -07:00)Registration: https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=366085742

Adsense Program Policies Page

A+P+P+P
If you've checked the AdSense program policies page today, you've probably noticed that we've just made a few small updates. We'd like to take a moment to clarify what's been changed.

The first thing you might notice when you visit the program policies page is that we've revamped the look. Based on your feedback, we've reorganized the content and updated the layout to make it easier to read and navigate. We've highlighted some key information for each policy, and added expandable 'Learn more' sections that you can click for more detailed information. Also, we've grouped together policies that are specific to only AdSense for content or AdSense for search.

Google brand violations: This policy has always existed in our Terms and Conditions, but we've now brought it directly to the 'Ad Placement' section of the program policies page so that it's easier to find. According to this policy, we don't allow ads or search boxes to be placed on pages which misuse Google logos, trademarks, or other brand features in the page content or URL, and which could mislead users into thinking the page is associated with Google.>


Deceptive implementations: We've clarified this policy a bit in the 'Encouraging Clicks' section of the program policies - ads may not be formatted in a way that makes them indistinguishable from other content on the page where they appear.>

Ad placement in emails and email programs: This updated policy clarifies that Google ads , search boxes, and search results may not be placed in emails, as well as alongside emails.>

Other Google products' policies: With this new policy, publishers aren't permitted to place ads, search boxes, or search results on, within, or alongside other Google products in a way that violates the policies of that other product or service. For instance, this would include placing ads on sites which allow users to download YouTube videos, which isn't permitted by the YouTube Terms of Service.

AdSense Orientation Webinar

If you're new to AdSense and would like help with getting started with your account, we're hosting a webinar this Friday evening just for you. In this webinar, we'll walk you through the basics of your account, show you how to start displaying ads, and also answer your questions via chat. Here are the details you'll need before registering:

Date: Friday, April 24, 2009Time: 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT Register at https://googleonline.webex.com/googleonline/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=573101592