1. Companies can use social media for branding by directly talking to customers which increases the faith of customer in the company thus increasing the reliability among customers.
2. Another important and primary reason of social media optimization is to generate the required and relevant traffic to the website.
3. You can inform the customers about the release of new products in the market hence, promoting your products through social media networks.
4. Search engine rankings are an important part of your online marketing campaign. By reaching and maintaining high rankings you can generate huge traffic to your website. It is important to understand how exactly it is done.

There are various techniques for SMO like creating list of prospective clients, adding them to your email and following them through various social media networks.  You can also keep publishing about your company, its services, achievements, clients, current openings etc.

Social media optimization is a mode through which you share the content about your business across the social web. As we all know that the online community is always hungry for information, providing interesting and unique information will always get users to your facebook page, blog, twitter profile, etc. Once they have arrived at your page, it is upto you to engage them and make them stay or just let them leave. Online Reputation Management deals with the monitoring of your online reputation by dividing the information available about your business into three categories – positive, negative and neutral. The main idea is to make invisible all negative mentions and to promote all the positive ones.

There are various methods available to achieve your targets in SMO like Blogging, RSS feeds, using images, videos and online communities etc. An SMO professional should know the relevant techniques that will get you the traffic and recognition for your business. The greatest advantage of the social media optimization is that it conveys greater visibility that adds to the getting more and more customer to a business. The difference between SEO and SMO is that social media optimization helps in increased brand hence making the website popular among the potential consumers. Social media optimization is a cost-effective internet marketing tool compared to SEO. For social media optimization to be successful, you should make your website content more interesting and incorporate some social media features like sharing buttons, social news, polling tools etc. that will keep the visitors coming to your site.

• Why should the customer join my website? (or ‘Like’ in case of Facebook)
• Why should the customer be actively involved with my website?

They will surely be climbing up the social marketing ladder at a fast pace.

So why care about social media?

As we all know, marketing is all about reaching out to your customers and making them aware about your product or service, what’s better than a place which already has over a billion users. Here are a few more reasons why social media has great potential in times to come:

• It recently surpassed e-mail to become the 3^rd most popular activity online.
• If Facebook was a country, it would be the 4^th most populated in the world.
• Twitter is the second largest search engine.
• Time taken by different types of media to reach 50 million users:
  1. Radio – 38 years
  2. TV – 13 years
  3. Internet – 4 years
  4. Facebook – 9 months (100 million)

Since the popularity of Facebook, many new social media sites have surfaced and some of them have actually built a strong following.

The user statistics of a few famous social networking sites today, stand as:

Users (in millions)

Now that we know the importance of social media lets see how we can prove to be great social media marketers. Some important ways of starting a social media campaign are:

• Register on popular social media sites depending on your business type.
• Introduce unique and interesting content which makes users like your website / profile / page.
• Quick or real time engagement is important and proper feedback is appreciated.

In the world where people are hungry for information and live to socialize, a brand can be built and collapsed in a matter of moments. By providing interesting content and qualitative involvement with customers, a business can reach heights never imagined.

One of the good things about posting a blog is that you do not have to be right all the time. Hence one doesn’t have to be perfect. It is okay to be wrong at times.

Some of the best practices that should be kept in mind while writing blog posts are as follows:

1. Titles must be interesting. Try using numbers in the title (example: The 7 Most Nutritious Foods)
2. Image must be included in the blog posts to attract more readers.
3. Links to previous posts of your own must be present.
4. Notify others by announcing your posts on other social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.
5. Comment to other’s comments in your own blog. This grows the conversation and adds value to your blog post.

Blogs are run by individuals as well as groups all over the world focusing on any and every topic that comes in one’s mind. As they have grown in popularity and readership, more and more people are turning to current news blogs for daily news updates. A handful of powerful blogs now have daily readership exceeding that of medium sized city newspapers.

Most blog readers scan dozens of blogs everyday, but they actually spend very little time on any one blog; thus a blogger’s goal becomes to grab the readers quickly and hold them. Readers have only a handful of blogs that they read carefully. You want to be one of them.

There are three basic keys to building a successful blog:

• Engage with other blogs and your own readers.
• Keep the material fresh and exciting.
• Provide the content that gives people a reason to return.

Pros:

1. The direct beneficiaries of this merger will be the stake holders because the price of Yahoo! shares will rise. The stakeholders will benefit more if Microsoft treats Yahoo! as an independent company.
2. Yahoo! holds a leadership position in Internet search marketing by virtue of its user base and is only defeated by Google. Microsoft can outsource either its complete search marketing business or only the online content business to Yahoo! and regard Yahoo! as its vendor or sister company, depending on its stake in Yahoo!
3. Microsoft has strong product development capabilities and so the development activities of Yahoo! should be undertaken by Microsoft. Yahoo! will retain its identity of public traded company and will become much more competitive due to increased scale and brand value.
4. This acquisition will boost the remnant inventory of Microsoft and its inventory will become more than any online media company.

Cons:

1. Being a technology company, Microsoft treats the disciplines in a top-down approach, as something inferior to the core concerns of the company. This will, in due course, saturate the entire combined company and result in one giant software company rather than a media company. It seems Microsoft also wants to extend its software holdings and be an even bigger software company. But being a media company will be tough for Microsoft.
2. The merging of two major companies leaves no choice with the consumer. If Yahoo and MSN are merged into one, does the consumer really end up with choice anymore? These are the two companies that bring almost the same thing to the marketplace, and those in the marketplace, have chosen one over the other for whatsoever reason. This will no longer be the case.

Using interactive marketing solution, the website owner seeks to develop a greater familiarity with the desires of the website viewer who take the time to view their website. Such a solution helps the website owner to fashion a website that appeals to the internet user. Many offshore product development companies are increasingly providing interactive marketing solutions.

Interactive online marketing frequently makes use of e-mail messages. Those messages are commonly sent with a signature file. Signature files appear in every message sent by the website owner, who has made skillful use of the e-mail software. Signature files facilitate a response from the person who got the e-mail message, which can contain important marketing information. That is why e-mail should be considered as an example of interactive marketing. Many offshore product development  services show the website owner how to use interactive banner ads. Such ads contain all of the essential elements of interactive marketing. Interactive marketing can also call for the use of interactive digital marketing. Digital marketing assists with the collection of data. Every response is quickly and easily recorded, and is thus made available to the website owner.

Many Web developers have failed to realize that Web content goes far beyond the text of the website. Only text is not synonymous or identical to content. You should not think that content is all about words, sentences, paragraphs, and pages. Here is the reality: Web content is about user interactivity. There are many, many types of content. Everything on your website is content. Think of things this way, users want to experience your website and not just reading an endless stream of words. For both the online and offline advertising, you create content. Content will continue to evolve, with the introduction of new types of content. Some of the most popular websites on the Web keep on adding interactive content to get and keep people’s attention.

To remain competitive, every website should do something unique to make it more attractive. If you are not creating or overhauling your website into a totally web 2.0 sites then interactive content is a great way to start. Users do not necessarily create their own interactive content, rather they use interactive tools on the websites to educate themselves, answer their obvious questions, or just have fun. Examples of these interactive tools are online games, online calculators, blogs, maps, journals, voting, and comment boxes. Interactive content is best when it is colorful, easy to use and engaging while still managing to be useful, helpful and informative.

An issue tracking software comprises of software packages that maintains and manages any problems that arises in an outsourced software development organization. An issue tracking system contains a site that has all details concerning each of their customers. An issue tracking system also contains a file that has information on features and designs of a system, which is available on the help desk.

Issue tracking software is helpful for many reasons. When it comes to running a business and keeping track of large amounts of data, things can sometimes go wrong to the point of your not knowing how to fix them. However, with an issue tracking software, problems with your project or database will be dealt with and solved immediately.

Issue tracking software installs a help desk right into your computer so that when something happens to your system database or the information system things can be controlled. Having someone at your aide can be of immense help, especially if computer maintenance is not where your strength lies. There is the feature of reporting the issue either over e-mail or by phone. This ensures that the help you receive will be intelligible and benefits your specific problem in a timely manner.

Issue tracking software does more than helping you to solve Issues. It lets you keep track of the status of the project like how far the project has reached in the execution stage. It helps you to assess your team’s Issue tracking efforts and you will be able to assess the important project metrics, such as testing, project progress, and more. Issue tracker software also lets new team members get up to speed quickly. They can see how far the software application is developed, what issues are open and closed, and who is assigned to each issue. A good Issue tracking software application should let you arrange the issues by categories too. You can easily track who is assigned what in the team. Issue tracker software can be a great management tool.

One of the important uses of Issue tracking software is to create a knowledge base so that team members and eventually the support staff can see the procedures used to solve issues. The new issue will be similar to one that has already been fixed, so by just looking at older issues, the new ones can be solved. Issue tracking software helps in generating reports. This is an imperative management tool and saves the time that managers spend on compiling information for reports so that they can actually spend more time in managing and less time in pushing paper. It can also be used in the employee appraisal process.

In an offshore software development company, Issue tracking especially for large projects is a very complex process. A planned approach to software development with a detailed and automated process for addressing those issues that come up during development and even after the development when the application is in maintenance mode. Issue tracking software helps you manage issues by increasing the productivity, reducing downtime, more satisfied customers and greater communications between all the team members and other teams.

Today our entire online presence demands passwords prior to doing a given task from banking to paying bills to entering social networks and media. No logon or password, and you are stuck in no man’s land!

However, not any password will do. Today we need strong passwords that are not easy to decrypt and frankly often not easy to remember. We all don’t know how many passwords and logons we use at any given time, but it’s a lot.

However, there are some tricks of the trade which we will explore below. Do not use the same password on multiple accounts. Obviously, if one of your accounts gets cracked, the hacker will have easy access to the others. A good password is an investment in protection your computer and vital information! So do not skimp on your investment.

Why Strong Passwords Are Needed?

The answer is really a no brainer. The bad guys are extremely sophisticated at what they do. A strong password should appear to be a random string of characters to an attacker. It should be 14 characters or longer, (eight characters or longer at a minimum). It should include a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers,and symbols.

Hackers have many approaches to steal your passwords and thus your data. They use the so-called “dictionary” attack trying one word after another with the expectation that users at many sites will pick a word in the dictionary for their password. Obviously for good reason this is not a good idea.

Hackers also use “brute force” attack by automatically trying every combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that can be used as a password. The shorter your password, the fewer the combinations they need to check.

What Makes a Good Password?

Bottom-line, passwords should be at least 8 characters in length keeping in mind that the shorter your password,the easier it is to crack. Passwords should contain a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters
(:~!@#$%^&*()_+{}[]|<>). Do not use a word that can be found in a dictionary whether foreign or specialty terms. Very importantly, the password should be different from your logon or any permutation of it. Also, don’t pick names or nicknames of people, pets, places, or personal information that can be easily found out, such as your address, birthday, or hobbies. And stay away from common keyboard sequences, such as gwerty1 or abc123. If you are thinking about making a password by just adding a digit to your favorite word, don’t do it, and Do Not Give Your Password to Anyone!

Why You Need to Change Your Password periodically?

It is a good idea to change your passwords on a regular basis. This way if hackers have been trying to crack your code they will be stymied as you have broken their pattern. It is just good common sense to protect your assets
to the best of your ability and not get lazy about it. The strength of your password will help keep it good for a longer time. A password that is shorter than 8 characters should be considered only good for a week or so, while
a password that is 14 characters or longer (and follows the other rules outlined above) can be good for several years.

Password Checker

Your online accounts, computer files, and personal information are more secure when you use strong passwords to help protect them.

The Global Snapshot from an international recruitment firm asked 7397 companies in major markets such as western and eastern Europe, Africa, India, China and the USA whether they were currently hiring at professional and managerial level. It then asked whether they planned to do so in the coming quarter and whether they were currently letting staff go or were planning to do so in the next three months. Current hiring across the globe was up from 46% of respondents in the spring to 50% now. And the percentage of organizations intending to hire in the coming quarter was up from 44% to 48%. At the same time the percentage of organizations intending to shed staff had fallen from 35% in the spring to 25% now.

You have been worrying about handling a possible layoff and might be keeping an eye on the happenings in the job market. Not only you, is the market itself vigilant on the issue. Many surveys have been conducted in the past few months to gauge the impact of the recession on the Indian job market. It’s amazing to know how fast the scenario of job opportunities is changing!

In February 2009 India, the safest employment destination a survey by an HR consultancy firm, predicted in February that salaries would continue to rise at an average of 8.2% in 2009. It further said that India was one of the safest options for employments because only 16% of the Indian companies were considering layoffs as an option whereas 55% of the US companies and 30.6% of the Chinese companies were considering layoffs as the most viable option. The survey also projected that about 60% companies were still thinking of hiring new employees. 9 out of 10 companies were also giving promotions to the right candidates. In April 2009- Recruiters say no layoffs but freeze fresh hiring. Then came the survey report which said that most Indian companies were against layoffs but they had also stopped fresh hiring and staff incentives with a curb on outstation travel for executives. The information technology and outsourcing, which were the booming sectors of the past, had become more conservative with 84% recruiters stating that there will be no more hiring.

And now comes the latest report of the survey conducted by Naukri.com which has brought some relief by stating that 44% of recruiters predict addition of new jobs. The hiring scenario of industries such as pharmacy & medical, construction & engineering and telecom is positive where over 50% of the recruiters are planning to create new jobs during 2009. About 15% recruiters from IT industry indicated that there is no possibility of recruitment during the year, while 4% went off to say that there would be layoffs.

Current India hiring levels are up to 51% from 29%. The hiring and firing of staff is one of the most effective measures of business confidence and there is no denying that, with a few exceptions, the jobs market for professionals and managers is improving all around the world.

OutsourceWorld is a pure-play business trade platform for executives who have a need to outsource business services. OutsourceWorld is the premier industry event, which focuses on sourcing and globalization and provides an excellent platform for software companies to reach out to the global market. OutsourceWorld is an event crafted for business leaders charged with strengthening their organization, improving competitiveness and increasing profit margins in an economy that has undergone significant structural changes.

At Global Sourcing Forum and Expo (GSFE), participating companies would get an opportunity to learn from influential leaders, executives, and practitioners who are leveraging global services to tackle economic challenges and to strategically grow their business.

This event is unique as it brings academics, thought leaders, sourcing executives and global suppliers from over 25 countries, all in just 2 days under one roof to discuss debate and learn about the challenges and opportunities posed by changes in their industry. This event has a great significance for medium and large-sized companies that are increasingly adopting global sourcing and offshoring as a competitive tool.

Exhibitors like Q3 technologies use this platform as a launch pad for their latest products. This is a 2 day IT event that will have the largest presence of  IT and ITES (IT enabled companies) companies with their innovative IT products & services. In addition, Q3 will explore established and emerging client destinations and follow best practices to successfully source, manage and deliver global services.

At OutsourceWorld 2009, Q3 technologies would be showcasing its expertise across a gamut of innovative solutions built around cutting-edge technologies in Microsoft .Net, Java and other open source platforms.

The next few days will see hectic activities in the company’s development center (India) and overseas offices as preparations are made for OutsourceWorld 2009. Q3 Technologies will also be exhibiting at the ESC IT Meet to be held on 9^th Nov’09 at Bogota, Colombia. This meet will have presence of  software companies with their innovative IT products & services.