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SMS Marketing India

Posted August 8th, 2010 by Siby Kuriakose | No Comments

Does SMS marketing work in India? Is it an effective marketing tool?

Today sending business messages or advertising on mobile phones costs next to nothing. 1 Lakh SMS at 3 paise  or 5 paise per message! As a marketer, i would think this is a very effective price to reach out to a targeted audience. But apparently there lies the catch. Targeting is not part of the package.

Having recently explore the medium myself, i was appalled at this bit of information.

Mobile service providers have been instructed by the government, no less, to capture as much information about their subscribers as possible. From a security perspective too this is vital, as the mobile telephony explosion rips through this nation creating companies that are buying out other companies near and far, it is important to be able to say that the person who is talking into the phone does not have an anti-national agenda. Before we digress further, so why is this basic targeting data not available with the marketers?

I asked the vendor SMSGupshup to give me a very targeted database. The database needed to contain people who would be interested in signing up at our new website, bookmybanquet.com, like business owners such as caterers, decorators, wedding planners etc. “Nopes, we don’t have such level of classification of subscribers”. So where do these companies get these databases in the first place? apparently they are purchased from the service providers directly, third party agents fronting for them or other enumerators. “What do you get”? “Mostly just names and numbers”.

It is this indiscriminate and inefficient bludgeoning of this medium that lead to the creation of the DND directory. Why is it not possible for the mobile companies to ask the consumer a) what messages he would be interested in? A shopaholic would be interested in discounts on premium brands, a student would be interested to know about colleges/admissions, business owners would be interested in accounting/hr/ services, film buffs would be interested in latest releases, you get the idea. b) How many messages in a day?

Use the above collected information, update it periodically and you have a proposition which marketers would pay more for, a lot more i’m guessing. An audience receptive to actionable messages is kind of the holy grail of advertising, isn’t it?

I would be happy to hear from anyone who’s had a better experience with sms marketing companies and/or companies who already have such services.

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Posted in category: SMS Marketing | Tags:

Funny Facebook Groups

Posted April 20th, 2010 by Siby Kuriakose | No Comments
Here’s our list of funny facebook groups. Does reveal a lot about us social animals…
  • I’m sorry, I just can’t hear you over the sound of me being so awesome
  • You instantly piss me off when I see you.
  • tripping but not falling and then pretending it never happened
  • I forgive but i never forget
  • I stay up late every night, and realize it’s a bad idea every morning.
  • WERE AGAINST FACBOOK CHARGING £14.99 A MONTH FROM JULY 1ST 2010
  • Talking to your pets as if you’d expect a response
  • I don’t care how full my wardrobe is, I still have nothing to wear!!
  • I don’t sleep enough because I stay up late for no reason
  • I redo high fives if they weren’t good enough the first time
  • I Brush My Teeth With Toothpaste, Not A Bottle of Jack You Disgusting Woman
  • no one will ever put up with you like i did. GOOD LUCK replacing me;)
  • Rumours inform you amazing things that you did not even know about yourself
  • That’s so funny, Last time I heard that I fell off my dinosaur.
  • I play with my phone when I’m waiting for someone so I don’t look stupid
  • Don’t you hate it when you die from not passing on chainmail?
  • I used to climb on the furniture pretending the floor was lava!
  • I Dont care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like A Dumbass.
  • Dear Mr. Spider, Unless You Pay Rent… You CANNOT Live In My House! :]
  • i’ve thought about punching you in the face on multiple occasions.
  • pleaseeeeeeee shuuuuuuut the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck upppppppp
  • Hearing someones story, and thinking ” Fu*k, you’re so full of s!*t!”

If you find such interesting and thought provoking facebook groups..do tell us

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Posted in category: Found on the Web, Social Media Marketing | Tags: ,

Time for a Google Search

Posted April 1st, 2010 by Siby Kuriakose | 2 Comments

How much time does it take for Google to return search results for a query?

Apparently,

0.68 times the velocity of an unladen swallow (or)
0.04 femtogalactic years
0.09 centons
0.18 microweeks
0.07 microfortnights
2.00 shakes of a lamb’s tail
23.00 skidoo
0.03 nanocenturies
0.53e-15 epochs
1.21 gigawatts
84.40 jiffies
at warp 8.96
at 5.44 hertz
11.90 parsecs
0.46e+43 Planck times
0.15 centibeats

Surprised? Yeah! we were too when we noticed that they had shifted from measuring time in boring old seconds  to these nerdy alternatives.

Yes! we’ve already started reading up on what all of them signify. You should too….it’s fun.  We were intrigued by the unladen swallow reference and went hunting. This is what we found,

In an early Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Geordi is looking for someone in a bar. He is told to talk to a Gorn bartender who knows everything. “He knows everything, huh?” states Geordi, sceptically. “What,” he asks “is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” “What do you mean?” asks the Gorn. “An African or a European swallow?” “Boy, he’s good!” Geordi responds. Source: Wikipedia

The funniest one off course is the ” 2.00 shakes of a lamb’s tail”

A shake is an informal unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds, or 10−8 seconds. It has applications in nuclear physics, helping to conveniently express the timing of various events in a nuclear explosion.The word comes from the expression “two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” which indicates a very short time interval.

But the top prize goes to 23 Skidoo. Building located on 23rd street,  swirling winds, men gathering to watch women’s skirt go up in the wind and cops breaking up the groups of men. Rich history on this one! read it here, 23 Skidoo.

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Posted in category: Found on the Web, Search Engine Optimization | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Meta Description Tag is required!

Posted December 28th, 2009 by Siby Kuriakose | 1 Comment

The meta description tag is back!!. For all those who are following Search Engine Optimization rules as laid down by Google and have taken to heart that the meta tags don’t matter any more, eat this! Meta Tags have always served the purpose of telling us what the HTML page is all about. This is now more important than ever before because Facebook and other sites are pulling  the description of the link/story from the meta tags on the page. I’m sure FB experimented with other stuff before settling on the description tag.

See below two examples of the use of meta description tags and the resultant display on FB,

Bad Meta Description tag

If you are considering popularizing your website through social media, you should get the basics right.  Stuffing your description tag with ‘prize’ keywords is definitely in the ‘not getting it right’ section. As always remember, your website and everything on it is for the user and the Search Engines should always come second.

Good Meta description tag

This tag explains gives an overview of the article, the published date and a thumbnail for good effect. There is not much effort involved either. just pull the first few lines of the article and add to the description tag. Simple cron job!

This is the last post for 2009.  Here’s wishing everyone a great year ahead!!

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Posted in category: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization | Tags: , , ,

Why scantily clad women will not generate click-throughs…

Posted November 15th, 2009 by Siby Kuriakose | No Comments

First the picture

Nudity in display advertising

Nudity in display advertising

I saw this display ad while browsing through a tech site! Before you think it, yes it did catch my attention and let me assure you with confidence, it will do that to for all males of the human race.

But what did it make me think? cheapshot, loud, vulgar, desperate, tricky are some of the words that came to mind.

In fact, according to this Princeton Study,

“The pictures of bikini-clad women activated brain regions associated with objects or “things you manipulate with your hands,” Fiske said. The students also remembered the photos of the half-naked women better than they did any of the others, she added, noting that the subjects remembered the bodies, not the faces, most clearly.”

The study also found that men’s perceptions of scantily clad women may be closely related to the ways people “dehumanize” groups from which they wish to distance themselves, such as homeless people and drug addicts.

So there you go…advertising is about getting the message across and inducing action, but not the kind this particular ad would :)

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Posted in category: Found on the Web, Pay Per Click | Tags: ,

Facebook looking to signup more Indian users

Posted October 14th, 2009 by Siby Kuriakose | No Comments

Facebook has 4.4 million users in India (as on October 14th 2009). While this is impressive indeed, the rate of growth has been nothing short of phenomenal. We had reported earlier here that in July 2009 facebook was adding new members at the rate of 25,000/day! We checked recently and discovered that since then (i.e. between July 30th & October 14th they have managed to add only an additional 690,000 users at the rate of 9,200 users/day. Still impressive yes, but the think tank in facebook decided to get down and change the rules of the game. Considering that Orkut, the predominant social networking site in India claims 13 million users, FB must have wondered as to what would be the easiest way to reach out to the other 9 million odd low hanging fruits. Simple….target existing users and offer to find their orkut friends on facebook.  See the image below

Facebook is luring users away from Orkut

Facebook is luring users away from Orkut

And now that Diwali or Deepavali  is close at hand FB is trying to use the festive season to tell people to connect to friends using what else, FB!! Diwali is a festival of lights, sweets & fireworks in addition to celebrating the victory of good over evil , hardly the day you would want to sit hunched over your laptop and update facebook. Grow up FB and understand the social and cultural intricacies of every nation you are in…

Wish Diwali through Status Updates on Facebook!This Diwali get connected says FB...

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Posted in category: Internet in India, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization | Tags: , , ,

Introduction to Digital Marketing – Social Media Optimization Case Study

Posted September 23rd, 2009 by Siby Kuriakose | No Comments

Introduction to Digital Marketing – Case Study – Social Media Optimization

Marketing 101, an event organized by Altius Consulting was held at Hotel Atria on the 11th Of September 2009. Designed to act as a primer for SMBs, Startups and entrepreneurs the day long event had interactive sessions on Market Research, Consumer Behaviour, Branding & Design, Digital Marketing, Marketing Planning and Venture funding through Marketing.

This is a copy of the deck that i presented introducing “Digital Marketing & Social Media Optimization” to the small but enthusiastic audience on that day.

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Posted in category: Internet in India, Pay Per Click, SEM India, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization | Tags: , , , , ,

Google Dominates Internet Landscape in India

Posted September 15th, 2009 by Siby Kuriakose | No Comments

In India, Google Sites accounted for 88.4 percent of all searches conducted, and had commanding share of time spent in social networking with Orkut (68.2 percent), maps with Google Maps (63.9 percent), multimedia with YouTube (82.8 percent). It also commanded slightly less than half of all time spent in the blogs category with Blogger (47.6 percent) and email with Gmail (46.8 percent).

Google-Owned Sites Across Selected Site Categories India
July 2009
Total India, Age 15+, Home & Work Locations
Source: comScore World Metrix and comScore qSearch
Site Category Google Site Category Rank by Unique Visitors Google’s Share of Time Spent in Category
India
Search* Google Sites 1 88.4%
Social Networking Orkut 1 68.2%
Maps Google Maps 1 63.9%
Photos Picasa Network 1 16.2%
Blogs Blogger 1 47.6%
Multimedia YouTube 1 82.8%
Email Gmail 2 46.8%

*Search category market share based on share of searches conducted, not share of time spent like the other categories

ComScore released data recently on the two most powerful emerging markets, Brazil and India. As a backgrounder look at this data;  Google Sites ranked as the most visited Internet property worldwide with 854 million unique visitors age 15 and older in July, an increase of 18-percent during the past year. Nearly 75 percent of all Internet users worldwide visited the Google Sites property, which accounted for 9.4 percent of all time spent online. Nearly one out of every ten minutes a person spends online around the world is spent on a Google site.

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Posted in category: Internet in India, SEM India | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Facebook User Statistics- August 2009

Posted August 29th, 2009 by admin | No Comments

Facebook has now more than ever become a potent force on the web and also a “parallel” internet. Optimization on Facebook is a must for every organization, brand and individual.

Facebook General Growth

  • More than 250 million active users
  • More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
  • More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
  • The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

Facebook User Engagement

  • Average user has 120 friends on the site
  • More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
  • More than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
  • More than 8 million users become fans of Pages each day

Facebook Applications

  • More than 1 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
  • More than 10 million videos uploaded each month
  • More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week
  • More than 2.5 million events created each month
  • More than 45 million active user groups exist on the site

Facebook International Growth

  • More than 50 translations available on the site, with more than 40 in development
  • About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Facebook Platform

  • More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries
  • Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
  • More than 350,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform
  • More than 200 applications have more than one million monthly active users
  • More than 15,000 websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008

Facebook Mobile

  • There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  • People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
  • There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

Source: Facebook

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Posted in category: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Orkut’s Popularity in India – Orkut Zeitgeist 2009

Posted August 26th, 2009 by Siby Kuriakose | 1 Comment

How popular is Orkut in India?  How many Indian users on Orkut? Which communities are favoured by Indians on Orkut? What does Orkut tell us about the likes and dislikes of the nation? Can a social networking community truly gauge the pulse of a nation?

Orkut claims it has 17 million ‘active’ users in India which comprises 48% of India’s internet population(Sourc: ComScore). It has been discussed on various fora that ComScore numbers for India are largely unreliable beacuse of their flawed polling process. Nevertheless Google seems to believe them, and in response to the phenomenal growth in Facebook’s popularity in India and the surge in their Indian user base in 2009, Google is pulling every trick in the book to convince people that Orkut still matters. Does it? maybe? for how long? what we would like to know is 1) How many active Indian users of Orkut have become inactive over the last year 2) How many new registrations in the last quarter?.

In the week that Facebook crossed 4 million Indian users, Google has released its first ever Orkut Zeitgeist for India. For those unfamiliar with Google Zeitgeist (literally “Spirit of the times”, Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit)) it releases weekly, monthly & yearly data on the top rising searches for the US and monthly & yearly data for other countries. Google rarely ever released monthwise data for India (See Google Zeitgeist for India 2008) but now we have the Orkut Zeitgeist measuring the pulse of the nation

The press release itself smacks of desperation and bad writing, the byline says “Interesting discoveries as orkut mercury rises across India” (barf!).
We on the other hand are displaying only the data that matters (for what it’s worth), not Google’s half assed observations, childish inferences and heavy handed marketing push

Here’s how the “First ever Orkut Zeitgeist measures the pulse of Indians online“

Methodology: “A community is the ultimate hangout for those on Orkut with a specific interest. People meet, discuss, share and learn from others on these communities. And these communities are what we looked at to compile the Orkut Zeitgeist. We looked at millions of communities and usage trends to finally arrive at the ten most popular communities. The trends are based on an anonymised and aggregated study of the behaviour of Indian users over the past seven days. The analysis was repeated over several seven day periods, to confirm the accuracy of results and to rule out episodic variations. We scoured through lists on a national level and then dug deeper into city trends”

Orkut Zeitgeist Results

Top National Communities List:

  • “StYlIsH PeOpLe”
  • “India”
  • “Chocolate”
  • “MTV & still more MTV!”
  • “TCS 2009 Batch……….!!!!!!”
  • “Tom and Jerry – Cartoon”
  • “Boys VS Girls (Who Is d Best?)”
  • “India Stock Market (BSE NSE)”
  • “Tamil Cinema”
  • “I hate to wake up early”
  • “Friends”.

A peep into regional trends:
India is a vast nation and trends vary from city to city. Given below are highlights of the top-most communities in various cities across India

Delhi
- “Stylish People” – The fashion hub of the country also boasts of style online
- “Chocolate” – The national capital is also the sweet centre of India

Mumbai
- Only “Marathi girls rock” for Mumbai
- “India” and “Marathi” – Mumbai defines the spirit of unity in diversity

Bangalore
- “India” “vokkaliga gowdas” and “Naruto” are amongst the top three
- With Bengalis, Malayalees, and Kanndaigas, Tamilians- Bangalore is the ‘true blue metropolis’- atleast online

Pune
-”Muktapeeth” – Responsibility drives the Pune youth, citizen journalism comes calling
- “Marathi girls rock” – Marathi girls find fan following yet again

Hyderabad
-“Powerstar Pawan Kalyan” and “Telugu Movie World” – Its Tollywood all the way for Hyderabad

Kolkata
- “Proud to be Bengali” and “Orkut’s Most Koolest Bengalis” – Ami Bengal ke bhalo bhaasi, Kolkata defines the love for Bengal

Chandigarh
- With “StYlIsH PeOpLe”and “MTV & still more MTV!” – Fashion ka hai yeh jalwa
- “Chandigarh Geri Route Sec 11″- the world revolves around this hang-out!

Here are some more trends:

  • Photo uploads are the new ‘scraps’: while millions of scraps are exchanged everyday, photo uploads have increased many fold (translation: people have stopped ‘scrapping’ and have now started to upload photographs)
  • Rahul and Neha are the most popular names on orkut (how is this a trend? Stupid parents!! stop naming your kids Rahul or Neha)
  • Women and Men meet half way for ‘chats’. Women care more for Horoscopes (halfway to where? the bedroom?)
  • Marketers are using a combination of communities, ads and apps to keep their audiences engaged. Film “Love Aajkal” drives over 200 communities and 100000 users (hey marketers dont forget us..orkut matters a lot! let us say that again orkut matters a lot!!!)
  • Orkut is accessed from everywhere: more and more users logging from their mobiles. (what do you mean by “everywhere”? the loo?)
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Posted in category: Internet in India, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization | Tags: , ,

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