Their is a big misconception among people that once they start a website they will start getting traffic on their and they will start generating revenues. For anything you launch online or offline you have to market your product. There are different strategies based on the type of product. Online market is more competitive as anyone can be running a competitive business out of basement so you have to be very innovative and "Always follow the basic rule of marketing: tracking your ROI, for every dollar you spend you need to track what you got for it. Else it is same as throwing your money away".
Many people get very excited and will say I am going to do viral marketing online and my site will be a big hit in few months as I don't have money. But viral marketing is not always cheap, and if your product does not serve the purpose or users don't like than your popularity can go do very quickly.
So long story short and back to some tips:
1. Always track the effect of every dollar spent online and how it affects your ROI. (Tracking is very important)
2. Try some new media's they are normally cheaper and create more buzz, but be careful of fraudsters and understand the product if don't believe in it don't try it.
3. Design your product from customers point of view and don't try to fool the user to visit your page as the consumer is getting very savvy and you will just loose a customer for ever and waste your money online.
4. The structure and flow of your website should be very easy and search engine friendly.
5. Submit your website to directories and search engines, (read the instructions from search engines on how to optimize your website to get better exposure).
6. "Never use black hat SEO techniques"
7. Make sure you know what your target market is and which sites they visit and try to come up some unique ways to be in front of your consumers.
This is in no way the only list their are so many other things you can do, this is just some help and best of luck.
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Tribune declares bankruptcy! Who is next?
Looks like things are moving down a slope. Yesterday Tribune declared Chapter 11, news is next in the line is New York times, they might even have to sell one of their best online asset to survive about.com.
I have been trying to convince Newspapers to make dramatic shift in their online strategy but they are moving at snails pace and looks like they have no interest in change. With Recession in the country advertisers will be looking to spend money where they can track their ROI, even though advertising will increase but advertisers are going to work more hard for ROI. This will move more budgets to online promotions rather than physical newspaper.
The only Newspaper I see is taking some interesting investments in online is Gannett group.
I can only hope newspapers are going to change fast enough to avoid which is unavoidable if the change does not comes ASAP.
I have been trying to convince Newspapers to make dramatic shift in their online strategy but they are moving at snails pace and looks like they have no interest in change. With Recession in the country advertisers will be looking to spend money where they can track their ROI, even though advertising will increase but advertisers are going to work more hard for ROI. This will move more budgets to online promotions rather than physical newspaper.
The only Newspaper I see is taking some interesting investments in online is Gannett group.
I can only hope newspapers are going to change fast enough to avoid which is unavoidable if the change does not comes ASAP.
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Newspapers: What will happen with Newspapers?
This is a question I have been thinking about for a while and recently attended two newspaper conferences in US NAA and NNA both have a different audience. NAA is attended more by national newspapers and big publishing houses where as NNA is very mom and pop based small newspapers, daily, weeklies.
The average age of people running these small papers is 65+ and everyone is trying to see what can they do to increase the circulations and get more advertisers, lot of them have websites now but they have not bought into that yet. They are being either handled by the publishing houses they work under or other third party hosting providers but I don't think they believe in it. Some who believe don't have the resources so what will happen to all these thousands of community newspapers when these people are not there. I don't see that their kids are involved in their business, these businesses are only running because of the passion of these people who started in early 1900's.
The change can come only through the main publishing houses but they are too slow to move and most of them will be out of business in next 10 -15 years only companies who are investing online will survive. Papers who can link their offline and online in a proper way will be much more profitable than in past and will be barrier for pure online papers.
Technology is the key and they have to treat technology as a driver and not a hurdle.
Lets see what will happen with Newspapers.
The average age of people running these small papers is 65+ and everyone is trying to see what can they do to increase the circulations and get more advertisers, lot of them have websites now but they have not bought into that yet. They are being either handled by the publishing houses they work under or other third party hosting providers but I don't think they believe in it. Some who believe don't have the resources so what will happen to all these thousands of community newspapers when these people are not there. I don't see that their kids are involved in their business, these businesses are only running because of the passion of these people who started in early 1900's.
The change can come only through the main publishing houses but they are too slow to move and most of them will be out of business in next 10 -15 years only companies who are investing online will survive. Papers who can link their offline and online in a proper way will be much more profitable than in past and will be barrier for pure online papers.
Technology is the key and they have to treat technology as a driver and not a hurdle.
Lets see what will happen with Newspapers.
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