Many of you might have already seen this, but just-incase you haven’t here is the update. Finally ‘Twitter’ has come up with the ‘Retweet’ feature which changes:

• Current style of Retweeting via twitter
• Seeing retweets (there’s an all new way of seeing retweets)

The Retweet announcement from Twitter

Retweeting the new way

The only catch is that this feature is still  in beta, so not all of you might be able to see this.

The fact that still a bulk of the audience use the INTERNET primarily to search for information, gives a fair idea about about the prominence of search engines.

I thought it would be good to take a re-look at some of the very general tips on search engine optimization/search engine visibility for businesses. With the advances in Web 2.0 (social apps), the dynamics of search engines have changed a lot but in my opinion, the plain old fact that a lot of your customers are searching for you online, still remains the same. Today, the search engine optimization activity needs to be integrated very tightly with the overall goals of your business.

SEO Definition: SEO aka Search engine optimization is a set of activities which when executed correctly, help your website to rank better for specific keyword queries on search engines.

A broader set of activities are associated with SEO (Planning, Objectives, Strategy, Execution, Metrics), but just to get started, you can break-down an SEO project into smaller parts with further diversification at subsequent stages.

Planning

What do I want from SEO

For a lot of people search engine optimization is nothing more than getting into the top ‘10′ rankings on Google.This is a classic case, because ‘Rankings’ are just a part of  SEO and scaling up can be very hard for a new business during the initial stages. So before jumping on and saying, I want more traffic & higher rankings qualify your goals and try to be as clear as possible.

e.g. of a goal – I want to increase my sales leads through web-traffic. If you’re very specific, further classification would mean I want to increase my sales leads by 20% in the next 4 months.

With this as an input, you can now plan your search engine optimization activities in the appropriate direction.

Inhouse or Outsource

The first thing that you need to ask yourself is that who is going to do it? To answer this, you need to analyze your current situation from a variety of perspectives. How do you think your customers are approaching you & finding you. The cost-centers of any cash-crunched small business will question the investment on SEO outsourcing. So obviously, you need to frame convincing answers on the ROI part. On the other hand, a lot of modern web-developers consider SEO knowledge as a part of their armory. For these cases, the marketing team-members can combine with the techies to get the job done in-house.

Choice of keywords/title-tags/meta-tags

Popular misconception: Let’s randomly copy the keywords of our competitors and we will be home.

Sadly, the above doesn’t work every time

Keywords identification involves a lot of research as ideally your keywords should be a healthy mix of your industry, services and your niche. If you are in the IT services industry and you want to improve your rankings for the keyword ‘IT company India’ it will obviously take a lot of time. However, if you are offering a niche service for e.g. Django consulting in New Delhi, then achieving high-rankings for a low frequency search term (long tail of keywords) will be much easier.

This is exactly where you need to think thoroughly and frame a strategy which caters to both the scenarios.

Tools

A simple Google search would reveal that there are a lot of good tools out there for search engine optimization. Some of them are by Google itself. Like other tools, a bit of tech know-how should be good to get you started.

Here are some of the tools, that I have either tried or read about in detail.

Central place for Web-masters

Google webmaster central tools is a one-stop shop for stuff like traffic analysis, search-queries and indexing issues.

Site submission to Google

If you have a new site & for some reason it is not being crawled by Google you can add it here:

http://www.google.com/addurl/

You can also add fresh content from your site to Google

http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/index.html

Find broken links your in website

After a big website project, you want test all the links and check if they are working properly. You can do it manually off-course, but the job becomes tedious if your site has a lot of pages. Xenu’s link sleuth is a handy desktop utility to find all the broken links in your website.

Keywords – Search

I think nothing beats Google’s AdWords tool when it  comes to getting ideas for new keywords. It also gives you volume estimates for keywords searches.

Keywords – Density

An application by Ranks.nl analyzes the density of keywords currently used in your website. You can just enter your website’s URL and it will show all the results.

Keywords – Ranking

To find your website’s ranking for keywords, there is a very nice rank checker by SEO Centro.

What are your thoughts on search engine optimization? Looking at today’s environment (penetration of social media) do you think it is still as important as it was a few years ago?

By-and-large most of us would agree with that  Social media is still in a nascent stage in the Indian context and there is a lot that remains to be explored in the Social media space.

Having said that the ripples in the social media wave created by many Indians involved are ensuring that Social Media is taken to the next level.

Note: For (businesses [small or large] or individual/s) who are trying to understand the online medium and how they can use it.  You should definitely follow these guys, not because some of them qualify as so-called thought leaders, but since they’re early-starters, they might have a degree of influence on your mind with their observations.

Observations

• Platform independence: Like at the global stage, Indians are not confined to usage of one platform in particular. A couple of years of ago, one could easily identify active users through blogs & discussion forums. But now the platforms have diversified, today there are Indians heavily discussing social media on twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. In other words, Social media trend-setters in India are spread across different platforms.
• Usage pattern: I  think the usage varies from pure fun to serious stuff i.e. profession.
  • Individuals who are doing serious business (social media as a profession)
  • Individuals sharing constant news-streams.
  • Individuals who are purely sharing thoughts on the value aspect of social media
• Geography: No particular region accounts for bulk of activity. There are Indians in social media who are based abroad and within India we have metros and (tier-1 & tier-2) cities.
• Ranking: Unlike the Ad Age Power 150 rankings, I think it won’t be justified to rank Indians in Social media. The idea is not to create a feeling of competition but a strong group which can collectively spread social media usage in India. Moreover, we don’t have a quality ranking system yet which goes beyond the numbers (i.e. technorati, back-links etc.) and the Indians in Social Media are still very less.

Indians in Social Media (References)

There have been several efforts in the past by many individuals to consolidate list of all the Indians who are in Social Media.

Please note: All the ratings and consolidated listings have been prepared by individuals based on their findings, observations and beliefs.

Here are some handy references which collate the names & links of Indians involved in the social media space (please feel free to add to the list below):

1. Google docs spread sheet – A consolidated google-docs spread sheet listing the names of Indians in social media, their profession and URLs.
2. Top Blogs Directory – The marketing & social media section in the directory of top Indian blogs.
3. Social media alltop – Filtered listing of Indians from the social media blogs on alltop is a good resource, but the filtering process is cumbersome and time consuming.
4. Twitter -  Prepared by Gaurav, follow the social media section for a listing of influential Indians in social media on twitter.  I won’t be surprised if see other  such lists in the near future. (influential Indians in social media on Facebook etc.)
5. Social media Blogs in India – Prepared by Sampad, this is a list of social media blogs in India. [Ignore the ranks ]

Next Steps

1. I would propose creating a Wiki of active & influential Indians in Social media. This wiki will also categorize the names according to how they’re using social media. (Any collaborators?)
2. What am I missing? – More references for Indians in Social media?

Good friend Nidhi Makhija who works for a digital agency called Experience Commerce just sent me an email about the social media campaign for IPL’s Royal Challengers Bangalore, called the RCB Fanatic Fans Challenge.  If you’re a cricket fan or RCB follower you can apply now before the contest closes on 20th September.

Here is what Nidhi says,

It is the first type of campaign in Indian cricket history. The club is basically allowing fans to apply for the positions of chief blogger, photographer and RCB fan – and the three winners will tour Champions League with the RCB team itself next month. It’s a great opportunity for fans to meet their dream cricketers, and for sports bloggers & photographers & ‘fans’ (or YouTube-content-creating-lovers) to get real experience and mass exposure.

Once again a fantastic demonstration of how agencies are tapping on the potential of social media.  India is a cricket crazy country and die-hard fans are just going to love the opportunity of sharing stage with their favorite cricketers.  Without doubt this challenge is going to success and you’d soon see a social media success case study about the RCB Fantatic Fans challenge.

Don’t waste your time and apply now & if you are a blogger help the guys in spreading the word

During the course of my discussions with friend Ananda, we were thinking about certain aspects of user-sensitivity/usability to which we couldn’t find any answers. I don’t have a degree in user-experience, neither do I have any experience in it. So we searched, thought, searched hard, thought hard but we couldn’t succeed.

Here are some open-questions for you to answer.

Sign in v/s Login

Quite often we find the two of sign in, login, signup being used together in different combination. So what exactly is the difference between these Sign in and Login? What does logging in to a site/application mean and what does signing in to a site/application mean? When can/when can’t I use sign in & login?

Twitter - Sign in window

Our take: From our observation it seems that login is used more often in the context of modern web2.0 applications/services for e.g. twitter, remember the milk etc. However, for more traditional ones like email services such as yahoo, hotmail etc. signin is used.

Username or email

To login to a service or an application there are three possibilities at a broad-level:

• Login with your username (Rememberthemilk)
• Login with your email (Facebook)
• Login with your username or email (Twitter)

RTM login screen

What factors decide the use of username or email while logging into a site? Is it dependent on the type of service/application? Or something else?

Forgot password? What about ‘Forgot username’?

Standard behavior in most of the sites is to give a ‘Forgot password’ link in the login screen. On click of that link you are taken to a new window where you have to enter your email address. On submit, you get a message that instructions to reset your password are sent.

Forgot password link

But hey, why do we only focus on forgot password? I can forget my username as well? Especially for those cases where my username is not my email? Or is there a research that indicates the tendency to forget password is more than that of a username?

Image verification in Signup process

Everybody knows what image verification is and why it is used during the signup process.  For obvious security reasons and differentiation b/w human and a bot.

Wait but is it really used everywhere?

No !! Mint.com for example doesn’t have an image verification system during signup process. Does this mean they are less secure? Obviously not as they have additional layers of security.

Does this mean that the use of image verification during signup process has some usability implications as well?

Your Turn!

What do you think? What is your take on these questions. In addition, please share your experiences as a user.

Look forward to hear from you !

Background: This is the third blogpost in a series of conversations with Social Media change agents, thought-leaders, experts and mavens to answer some of the most important questions surrounding the subjects of Social media and Web2.0 ! The emphasis of this discussion series is to address ’socialmedia’ at a ground level and talk about the real world issues that are being faced by us on both sides of the road: i.e. as actual users and as consultants/agencies in this space.

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I am pleased to have with me, Peter Bihr – a freelance consultant from Berlin, Germany. As a freelancer, he consults on online communications for corporate, non-profit and political clients. Peter deploys web strategies based on Social Media, Web 2.0 and blogging. He blogs here and his twitter handle is thewavingcat. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

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1. Define and differentiate the terms – ‘Social Media’ and ‘Web2.0′ for a business-decision maker who uses the internet to check his email.

Social Media are online media that foster, and live off, user-to-user interaction, and tools and practices that revolve around these kinds of social interactions. All this combined plus the harnessing of collective intelligence is Web 2.0.  Examples: Twitter and Facebook are social media in their purest form as they consist mainly of human-to-human interaction – they are all about conversations. As a good example of Web 2.0 you could point to Google (which rates the relevance of a website by how many people link to it and thereby vouch for its quality), or the Amazon recommendation engine that gives better recommendations the more people use it, so it harnesses collective intelligence. Of course there are dozens of other examples, too.

2. For small and medium sized businesses, what are the steps towards a Enterprise 2.0 strategy? How do they start-out and at which stage do tools/technology come in?

First, strategy is more important than tactics. Define your goals first and then see which tools you need, not the other way round.

Second, prepare to change your company and the company culture. Engaging in social media doesn’t just mean another channel to fill with PR output. It rather means opening up to conversations with your stakeholders. Stakeholders are a much larger group than just clients – past, current and future clients, but also staff, fans, critics, journalists and many others, all of which want to talk to you and hear back from you. This influences absolutely everything in your company – every single staff will be a spokesperson for your company. This means some kind of restructuring might be required. Do consider that option. Again, structures, processes and company culture need to change just like the tools you’re using. Allow for both to change and evolve.

Third, fail early and often, and iterate. It’s ok to make mistakes. Learn from them. Learn from your stakeholders. Thank them for criticizing you, they’re trying to help you.

3. It is generally realized that while identification and roll-out of a tool is easy, it is very tough to ensure its healthy usage and sustenance over a longer period. There are many examples of such collaboration tools (like wiki) that are rolled out of sheer excitement but eventually they fade out due to lack of notice. This happens despite the best effort from the group/individuals behind it. How can the internal-evangelists control such scenarios?

1. Don’t overwhelm your colleagues. Give them time, everybody has a different adaption rate. Find the right tools for the right person. Not everybody likes Twitter, and that’s ok. The same person that despises Twitter might be a great blogger or the other way round.

2. Give it time. Just like company culture, a tool need nurturing and maintenance.

3. Assign clear responsibilities. If no one feels in charge, a tool is likely to be deserted at some point.

4. There has been a lot of debate/discussion over the ROI on social media. Today, the marketers are forced to justify all monetary investments. Considering the periodic changes how do you perceive the ROI?

ROI is still hard to measure. Defining clear goals is key!

5.  I would blog about it, tweet it, send press-release to the bloggers and do a bunch of other things. – This seems to be a common definition of ‘Social Media Marketing‘ for product launches. Is there a structured/streamlined approach towards utilization of social web for marketing purposes?

Don’t spam. The most valuable connections are those built to bloggers on a long-term basis. Just like building and maintaining relationships to journalists, blogger relations are important. That’s no easy and no cheap task, but good connections to 10 bloggers are much more valuable than a mass mailing to 1000 bloggers you don’t know.

6. Bulk of the online communities fail for variety of reasons – weakness of original idea, lack of involvement by the moderators, belief in build it and they’ll come philosophy, overload of existing communities themselves. With constraints like these how do you foresee the future for online communities? Will we see more such online communities in the future?

Absolutely! Just like we see plenty of successful communities today, there’ll be many in the future. A lot more will fail than succeed, but that’s the same everywhere. Particularly in niches, in the long end of the long tail, there are many communities that haven’t reached their full online potential.

7. External perspective about India’s Social Media Movement?

Sadly I’m not familiar with the social media movement in India. From what my Indian friends tell me and from what friends tell me about the social media scene in India, there’s great energy there, and of course a lot of really smart people. I’m looking forward to seeing more Indian startups and projects pop up.