E-Marketing

What is eMarketing?

eMarketing or electronic marketing refers to the application of marketing principles and techniques via electronic media and more specifically the Internet. The terms eMarketing, Internet marketing and online marketing, are frequently interchanged, and can often be considered synonymous. eMarketing is the process of marketing a brand using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a range of technologies to help connect businesses to their customers. By such a definition, eMarketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via the worldwide web with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

Why is it important?

When implemented correctly, the return on investment (ROI) from eMarketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing strategies. Whether you’re a “bricks and mortar” business or a concern operating purely online, the Internet is a force that cannot be ignored. It can be a means to reach literally millions of people every year. It’s at the forefront of a redefinition of way businesses interact with their customers.

eMarketing Planning

At the centre of any emarketing (or internet marketing) activity is a well designed website. The website is the destination of the customers targeted by the emarketing activity and takes on the role of sales and support tool, as defined by the company's internet strategy.

The emarketing planning should incorporate your business and marketing strategy and the resultant plans will outline what the website will offer in terms of corporate and product information, as well as how to convert the website visitors into customers.

The plans will also outline the website promotion side of the emarketing activity, designed to attract the visitors to the website. By addressing the best mix of the emarketing services and email marketing options available, an integrated ongoing campaign can be set in motion which will also tie in with relevant offline marketing methods.

Integrated eMarketing

Except in a very few cases, your emarketing activity will not be employed in isolation but will be part of your company’s overall business development activity. With an integrated emarketing programme, you will be able to use your website and other on-line activities as key elements which complement and considerably add to your offline marketing activities. The resulting powerful combination of the two is your key to success, whether you are looking to increase your awareness or your sales promotion activities, or you wish to improve your customer relationships.

References:

1. http://www.rosetta-alba.com/emarketing/emarketing_overview.htm
2. http://www.quirk.biz/cms/801.emarketingone-chapone.pdf

Syndication - Podcasts and RSS feeds

As mentioned in the previous blog entry, the developments in Web 1.0 made interactive communication through internet possible, thus bringing along Web 2.0. This facilitated the gradual shift from institutional control of online media content to a consumer control model. And as a result dawned the Era of SOCIAL MEDIA.

As we all know one such social media platform are the podcasts. From news channels and radio stations to people like you and me, all of us can start our own podcasts with the intention of sharing knowledge or just for pure entertainment purposes. These podcasts can be either audio or video files, video files sometimes specifically referred to as 'Vodcast'. These files are made available to the public, using syndication feeds, such as RSS feeds. Read on to learn more about how to use and also how to create a podcast and also learn more abouthow RSS feeds work?

The growing popularity of podcasts is evident from the graph below.

For those of you who have never used a podcast before, here are a few pointers:-

• Most famous application for subscribing to a podcasts are iTunes, Yahoo!Podcasts and Podcast Alley
• In iTunes, all you have to do is go to the iTunes store, select the podcast option on the bar on top. Then select the category of media content you wish to subscribe to and select from the various free and payable podcasts available! Once you subscribe to a podcast it will appear in your podcasts library in iTunes, with updates as new episodes/files are released by the same channel/author.
• Other podcast applications work more or less in the same way.

This is how an iTunes Store looks like!

This is what your Podcast Library looks like!

So if you wish to create your own podcast, well follow these steps:-

1. Determine the nature of your podcast. What will the content be? Write it down so you don't forget. Come up with an outline or some sort of organizer to keep track of what you will discuss or promote
2. Record the audio for your podcast (Mixcraft or GarageBand are good). For a free alternative, Audacity is great too.
3. Tag it, give it ID information (Artist, Album) and give it album art. Either make it yourself, find some free, non-copyrighted images online, or have a friend make one for you.
4. Save the audio file (in MP3 format) to your computer desktop. Do not use special characters (such as # or % or ?) in the file name. Open it up into your sound editor and edit out extra background noise or long periods of silence. Put in intro/outro music if necessary.
5. Create your RSS podcast feed. The feed must meet all industry standards for a valid 2.0 feed with enclosures. Try using a complete solution and free service such as Podblaze or Podomatic (see the external links below). The easiest way to do it is to use a blog. So hop on over to Blogger.com, or another blogging service, and start a blog with the title of your podcast. Don't make any posts just yet.
6. Put your RSS podcast feed on the Internet. Go to Feedburner and type in the URL of your blog and click "I am a podcaster!". In the next screen, configure the elements for your podcast. These are the elements that directly relate to the podcast. your feedburner feed is your podcast.
7. Go to OurMedia.org and sign-up there (this may take a while). Then go to your files, and upload your MP3 file.
8. Make a post on your blog/website - the title of the post should be the title of that episode of the podcast, and the content will end up as the "Shownotes" or "Description". Put in a little about what you talk about in your episode. At the end of the post, put a link directly to your media file.
9. Wait a little. In a few minutes, Feedburner should add this to your feed, and now you have an episode! You can submit it to iTunes or a number of other podcast directories to get it known. You may want to wait, however, until you have some experience, so that your podcast will be compared as a fifth episode to another's first.
10. Ping the appropriate podcast directories when a new show is updated.
11. Put the appropriate subscription buttons on your website so people can subscribe to the RSS podcast feed.

Reference:- http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Your-Own-Podcast

RSS Feeds - What are they and why are they necessary?

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format that helps podcasts and blogs create sub-scriptions and deliver regular updates to its customers. RSS solves a problem for people who regularly use the web. It allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in. You save time by not needing to visit each site individually. You ensure your privacy, by not needing to join each site's email newsletter.

RSS Feeds and Web 3.0

Due to even further modifications in web 2.0, which is now known to us as web 4.0, RSS Feeds can be put to further use as they are now made available to handphones, i-pods and others portable devices. This gives us the added luxury of accessing our subscribed podcasts on the go!

Internet And The Evolution Of Web!

Can any of you who are reading this right now imagine your life if the internet didn't exist? I bet you cannot! Well for one thing you won't be reading this blog entry rite now.

It's true that there was a time when internet didn't exist and people did survive without it. They used the help of library books to gain information. They communicated via letters instead of e-mails. But with the invention of the internet all this and much more was made more convenient. All the information we need is just one click away. We don't need to spend hours in a library trying to find the right information, instead we can just type in any key word and get what we want within seconds on the internet. But what do we really know about this technology that has made our lives so easy? Here is some info for all of you who wonder about the same questions that I do.

Internet and Web- Not the same!

First of all to define internet, it is a global system of interconnected computer networks to serve billions of users worldwide. The internet carries a vast amount of information resources and services, most importantly the inter-linked hypertext documents of the world wide web(www). Whereas the web is a global information medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the internet. The term Web is often used as a synonym for internet, but it is just a service that operates over the internet, like e-mail services.

As we have already covered the history of internet, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the Web and its evolution as it is one of the most important and useful components of the internet.

This video will give you a better idea!

Invention of Web/ Web 1.0

On November 12, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee an independent contractor at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland published a formal proposal along with Robert Cailliau, to build the World Wide Web, a platform for documents written in Hypertext language to be viewed by browsers, using client server architecture. The need for web had arisen from the need of the CERN physicists from around the world to share their data with each other on one platform. As it proved so useful to share data online with people across national boundaries, the world wide web was launched for the common public to use in sometime around 1991. This was the web that we know as web 1.0.

The difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

• Web 1.0 was just a platform where one could only publish their work that they wanted to share with others. The web pages used to be static with no dynamic aspect to it. It basically contained Read-only material.
• Web 2.0 was introduced the interactive platform, such as the blogs, where the readers can now actively contribute to the material online.
• So what's Web 3.0? Watch this video!!!

I hope that this entry has been informative for you! And hope you have enjoyed the videos!

*Disclaimer*- All the videos are taken from youtube.