Jojo’s World

For all those who don’t know, Mukesh (malayalam cine actor) has written 2 novels.

1. Mukesh Kathakal – Click Here for Review

2. Mukesh Babu & Party in Dubai

Second one  “Mukesh Babu & Party in Dubai” is a realistic novel which is based on an extra ordinary and funny situation faced by the author in Dubai (during his 4 day trip for a stage show). His writing style is so funny that this book will make you laugh many times.

For more review: Click Here

RATING: 4/5

VERDICT: MUST READ

Here comes another post on Talent Showcase. This time its not just photography or video,its a Bike! and not just a bike;its actually a “folding bike“. What’s that ?

The students (Sherin Sunny, Tony Jose,  Nidhin Ephrem and Sujimon R ) of ST. JOSEPH’S COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, PALA, KOTTAYAM , made this portable bike (We are living in a “portable era”) and they belong to Mechanical Engg. Department.With the help and guidance of their project guide, P S Harikumar, these smart boys brought this concept as a part of their final year project.

After a comfortable ride on this “mo-bike”, it can be folded and kept in a bag. Running on a 60cc petrol engine, it can travel at speeds of 60 Km/hr, giving an average mileage of 50 km on one litre petrol. Weighing at just 30 kg, it can carry loads up to 130 kg. The bike scaling 1metre can be folded down to half its length. The engine is placed at the rear to facilitate this.

The “mo-bike” was designed and made within 3 month at an estimate expense of Rs.12000/-, as a part of their final year project.

I am really proud to see such an attempt from these students and am happy that I also belong to St.Joseph’s alumni. Hearty congratulations Mr. Sherin Sunny and friends. Keep up the good work.

Do you have some similar works or talents to showcase ? Click Here to know how!

Take a look @ the photographs:

Spam/non-sense comments is a major headache to any wordpress webmaster.As long as web traffic is worth “money” spams will exist! Its a fact and we have to take measures to prevent spamming in wordpress blog posts. Earlier days it was really a great headache for admins of wordpress blog. Time consuming is the process of verifying each comments and moderating.

How to prevent/block spam comments in wordpress?

Akismet Spam prevention plugin is the answer to this problem. This plugin is developed by the wordpress dev community itself “Auttomattic” and is praiseworthy plugin. Once you upload and install this plugin it will automatically filter spam comments from your comments database. Another speciality is its intelligence. Some comments that by passes Akismets walls,when moderated as spam by admin will be analysed and all other similar comments will be marked automatically as “spam” in future.

Where to Download Akismet plugin?

You can download akismet plugin from wordpress.org. Here is the Download Link

Do you know how to make a post “sticky” in wordpress?

If don’t heres the options:

I think you need higher versions of wordpress for this like Wordpress 2.8 or higher.

Happy blogging!

Hope you all are aware of the Microsoft’s latest Google Killer search engine “BING“. They launched their beta version few days back. Just go to Bing.com and see how it is and the enjoy the first looks. I didn’t like its front page design which looks awful. As there’s nothing in looks and what matters is the internal search technology, so I gave it a few shots.

First Experiance:

As an SEO/SEM business man the first approach was to compare our SERP’s in Google and the one’s in BING. Well to my surprise BING has the same SERP’s for the one’s we rank higher in Google. Most terms are in #1 to #5 range in both Google and Bing. So thats awesome for me! (I am forgiving the looks!..lol)

But I found for many serach queries the results in “Google” and “Bing” are almost same. For a particular page of a search term (especially front page) Google and Bing delivers almost similar results, on an avg you can find 5 similar results on pages of both Google and Bing

I haven’t gone that deep into search with Bing. Well you may try it yourself!

Most people are now talking about letters of BING, some says its “But Its Not Google” and one of my friend said it may be “Bing Is Not Google” Who knows?

So far it was okay! But today when I read from Facebook messages that “BING not allowing sex/porn/abusive related searches in India and some other countries” I felt sad that one more attempt to Kill Google is ending up as vain! I am saying this not because Bing is technologically bad or something.

If Bing is made to fight Google, it should beat Google in all means. When Google delivers results for searches related to sex/porn, If Bing is not delivering in name of ethics or some other reasons, its Bing’s failure.

Next foolishness is word “sex” doesn’t mean “porn”. “sex” also means “male” or “female”. So not delivering any results for term “sex” is not reasonable. Why Bing can’t deliver results from Wikipedia and sites related to “Sex Education” ?

But Bing is delivering for a term “What is Sex”, it may be bcz that query means more to education.

Also Microsoft should keep in mind that of the total Global search volume, more than 50% is related to sex/porn.

Microsoft could have chosen a different path. Instead of not delivering any results, they could have placed a warning message at the top of the page like, “This search may deliver explicit sexual results. If you are below 18 please consider  changing search terms”

Is that more good than delivering nothing! Microsoft should rethink!

Marketing is the key factor that determines the success of a business. When ever you start or plans to expand your business, the most important question that you have to solve is “How to improve marketing”

Cold Calls (the practice of calling an individual/firm/company/organization,introducing yourself and about your company,explaining your services and how it can improve/help the other ones business and @ end of call enquiring “weather he/she is interested in the services”) are one of the conventional type or marketing tactic followed over ages. Its still used by many people who know only little marketing tactics and by new startup’s with no ability to hire a marketing team. When I and my friends started our business, we also were at the same situation. We had no marketing teams, not much money to employ some business consultants. The only option left was “do things yourself and study from your experience and mistakes“. If you are working on this mode or if you are doing things by yourself without much knowledge then you should always be in the “feedback” mode, means you should always take feedback’s from each experience. You should ask questions yourself, Why this client rejected my proposal? What was the reason? Analyse and find out then apply feedback correction (Correct yourself is the whole idea!!).

I think, we have made only few cold calls (some 10 maybe! ) so far and I am very proud to say that none of them worked out! After a few failed attempts we stopped making cold calls (well there’s another reason because we already started getting inbound leads by then). But its a fact that none of the cold calls worked out. Also many of the marketing guys I have talked with shared their experience with cold calls as “hell“.

Why cold calls fail?

There are many reasons for this. I will share some of my experiences and of other guys.

1. A cold call is not at all targeted - When we are making a cold call, we really don’t know weather the other hand is really in need of your services/product. In 90% of cases that party might not be interested in the particular services we are offering. They may just say” Oh I am not interested right now! Please call later”

2. Cold calls are indirectly equal to advertisements – Its a fact that we HATE ads! Cold calls also indirectly effect as ads or forced ads or push ads. We really don’t like calls from our mobile network vendors like Vodafone,Idea,Airtel etc. I know many guys placing “Dont Take” with these ad serving numbers.

3. Inappropriate time of call delivery -  We don’t know the mood of the person we are calling, weather hes busy or he/she is interested to spare their valuable 5 mins for us etc etc. In most cases people will say “Oh I am busy right now, please call later”

4. Already hired similar service/bought a similar product - This is another case. I myself had an experience. With an intention to sell SEO services to one of the top builders in Cochin, I approached one. It was fair deal as he understood what I said and granted me an appointment. I went there on time with proposal, explained all the stuffs pros and cons, advantages of online marketing, cost effectiveness etc. “Okay! Okay! great” he said and continued “but I already gave contract to some company ‘x’ so am really sorry. I called you to know what difference you can offer compared to the other” Hmm! so there are cases like this also. But I was more than happy when he said, “your proposal sounds much better than the other and I will certainly call you if the other guys failed”

5. Pricing dilemma- Its another major problem that many of you might have faced. Suppose we were lucky to close a cold call to sale. Next big thing is pricing or bargaining to the sense. When a business is gained through cold call, i think the “more needy” one is we service provider. Client might have the attitude “Its you who pushed me into this deal, I have no need” So he will start bargaining! sometimes to the xtreme that we can see only in streets. well that too is a nice experience. Highly efficient marketers will still tame such persons and close the deal in fair (fair to the marketer!)

6. Delay in payments- They might make an advance payment and most likely to make the second one too. I dunno/ I am not sure weather they will make the last scheduled payments.

7. Chance of dropping projects in half - A client that is achieved via cold calls are likely to drop the project in half the way. He might simply say ” I have run out of cash” or “I lost interest” etc. He may even ask a refund of advance payment.

8. Difficult to satisfy- They might not have a clear aim or a clear cut idea of the project they are buying. They will always ask for corrections here and there and at the end they will say “I m not satisfied”

9. Lack of marketing skills – Its another major reason I should have pointed out @ start of this article. One should be a “terrific” marketer to close a cold call. He should be sharp and clear with aim and knowledge and at the same time should be polite and cool.

10. Offensive – Most cold calls are really offensive! Chances are high it may create a resentful displeasure.

At the end think yourself, “Do you like cold calls?“ I dont!

What’s your idea? Share it as comments if you like and if you have time to spare.

Its been a couple of years now since I started working on web, especially on search but its quiet strange that I started to dig “what is search?‘ just recently(lack of time may be the reason).  So far I and my friends were working on some web projects, we were trying to build that up, bring traffic (we were successful in those attempts really) and @ the same time we were building our company Techseol Web Solutions up. If you fail to FOCUS on what you are doing, you will end up no where (thats what I learned so far!)

I am making a humble attempt to answer “What is search?” from my very small experience on this industry so far.

How search happens?

We always “search” to find an answer to a question in our mind.  When ever we need to know about something the easy solution is “search”. You will get your answers in Google or Yahoo or Live or @ some other places. When ever we finds an answer we stop searching because we have reached where we want to. I think that’s the whole basic idea of search.

How to utilize searches?

A search always ends @ an answer or a solution. Humans always love who helps them with a solution @ the right time. So in a way they love the search engine (mostly Google) who helped or guided him/her to an answer. They will keep in mind that “Google/Yahoo/Live gave me an answer so I am gonna use that again”. But the ultimate HUG will be received by the website/blog/wiki who provided him/her with the right solution. Here comes the importance of writing informative/useful articles in your website because it always leads to a HUG by the searcher. They may pay a return visit in future, they may share that blog with their friends, they may bookmark in social medias etc etc.

See 1 guy who payed a visit to your website is = 1 unique visitor = 1 valuable customer of your business.

If you are number 1 in Google for a particular search term say “How to compress a file” and you are getting 158 unique visitors a day from this particular term alone. If you can provide a COMPELLING article on that topic “How to compress a file” answering all the questions, you are making sure that you retains all that 158 customers+expecting more visitors by the reference of these peoples (each day). On the other hand if you are giving a worth less article you are making sure that you will not get the same customer again+no referals + bonus chances of putting your site down in search wikis.

How much searches happen?

Well, even Google can’t answer this exactly. There’s millions of billion searches happening each day. Always keep in mind that 1 searcher = 1 potential customer. I think by localizing things I might be able to give an idea about the volume of searches happening.

Case 1: Global search-Term “laptops”

From the figure its easy to understand that term “laptops” has a search volume (number of searches) of 13,600,000 per month.  This means around 4,500,00 unique searches happening a day in Google globally for the term “laptops”. So if you are the #1 result for term “laptops” in Google you gets exposed to that much inbound customers (targeted) a day, increasing the sale chances.

There arises a question always, what this search is happening for? Obviously not all  4,500,00 people searching for “laptops” intend to buy one. Their intentions diversifies, they might be looking for reviews,for comparisons,for price tariffs,for pictures etc. It Varies!

But more focused search term “buy laptops” has a different meaning. Those customers might be interested to buy a laptop, they might be looking for sources of buying a laptop etc. It also varies but I can say they are more focused and higher % of conversion to sale possibility exists. When search gets focused search volumes also gets reduced. Compared to “laptops” the term “buy laptops” has only 1800 searches happening a day. But always keep in mind its better to get focused on your industry rather than widening. Widening is a good concept when its viewed in terms of advertising. For ex: If sites of Sony or Dell or Hp can get #1 in Google for term “laptops” they can deliver a targeted advertising to  4,500,00 unique peoples a day free of ad cost! How sweet is that?

Giving more focus to search terms, we can see searches also happen for different models of laptops like Dell Xps M1330 or Sony Vaio Vgn CS 21 etc. These searchers are highly focused either to know more about a particular laptop or know its review or to see some photos or for a “buy”-a sale! From figure we can understand that “Dell Xps” has around 27,300 serches a day while higly focused “Dell Xps M1330″ has only 3700 searches happening a day.

Well I talked about only some 4 or 5 search terms only. Think about numerous jumbling s of these terms, infinite number of combination’s of search terms, different types of terms that can arise in a searchers mind like “clean laptop” comparison terms like “sony v/s dell” “is dell bad?” etc etc etc. Billions of searches happen a day about “laptops” and its various combinations alone. See how big search is!

Case 2: Regional search-Localised to a City

See lets take the same example of “laptops” but instead of thinking global lets go Local. Lets take a city of Chicago. From data it shows that the term “laptops chicago” has 1300 searches a month. These customers might be searching for laptop shops in Chicago or laptop service centres in chicago or they may be searching for some laptop showrooms in Chicago to see their model of choice in real (not as a digital image in computer monitor). Also the term “laptop repair chicago” has 1000 unique searches happening a month. Now think of the different cities in Usa, different countries, states etc etc. Know how big search is!

My aim was to answer “What’s the basic idea of search” with a perspective that might be helpful to webmasters,search marketers and all those related peoples.

I will be coming with more analysis oriented articles like “1 article = 1 unique visitor“  and “Vision oriented search“

Ever wondered what is Black Hat spamming or Black Hat SEO?

When it comes to the SEO world 2 words that you often hear  is “White HAT SEO” and “Black HAT SEO“. In the initial days I used to wonder weather “White Hat SEO” is something done by Westerns and “Black HAT” is something done by Africans? (lol…kidding!). Well there’s that much similarity and that much differences between the 2 terms. Actually they are not just 2 terms, they are entirely different processes of the same domain.

History of Black Hat SEO starts with same age of White HAT and may be both began from the year 1995 or so! Since then Search Engines evolved and evolved many a times to prevent black hat spamming effectively, especially Google. Black hat seo will affect search engines to display results that are of not much worth for the user who searches a particular term. Using black hat techniques spammers always places affiliate links,product links etc as the first page results for particular search terms.

Even two days back when I searched for some terms, I found Black Hat working effectively in Google still. In this 2009, even after years of evolution (reformations of algorithms)  of Google (10+ years), Black HAT still works!

See the pic below for an example:

This is something pretty serious that Google needs to consider in emergency. When the company itself is facing threats from latest Social Medias, real time search engine Twitter and various other forms, delivering quality results for its users turned as a RESPONSIBILITY for Google.

Black Hat spammers always uses Non-Moderated platforms for exploiting:

See the second result on the above pic. Black Hat spammers exploits an un used or a non-moderated forum of Travel555 for their black hat procedures. Keeping an eye on long term strategy, non-moderated forums always makes a good playground for the black hats!

If you have any queries regarding this post, please feel free to comment below. I am happy to answer!

Its a history being made with “Unnai Poloruvan” remake of critically acclaimed and successful Hindi film A wednesday . When the legendary actors of Indian Cinema industry Mohanlal and Kamal Hassan join hands to make a film, its quiet natural the viewers expectation goes high and a hype that shatters the sea wave will get created.

A wednesday was a different attempt which dared to get out of the cages of conventional Hindi cinema. Performances were really great in which Anupam kher and Nazarudeen Shah fights inch to inch to outshine each other, but in the end the viewer find its difficult to distinguish whos great! Both performed their best in A Wednesday. Storyline of the movie was pretty interesting and was a great variety and Kudos to the brilliance of the director who kept the pace of the movie according the script demands. Its a story thats happening in a day-A Wednesday!

Watch the movie asap if you haven’t yet!

I hope the south Indian legends Mohanlal and Kamal Hassan will outshine both Anupam Kher and Nazarudeen Shah with their damn best performances ever! Well there’s “reasons” to expect! I am eagerly waiting to see the national award winners (multi times) competing each other on screen…nothing less than an “inch 2 inch”

This Article was written by me  and submitted to  YOUmoz section of worlds most reputed SEO Blog-SEOMoz! Here is the link to SEOMoz Article

In the age of new media, how can we use them effectively to increase sales/business? How can you use new-age social media as a marketing channel?

Let’s start from some basics to have a thought on this subject. People always neglect some simple facts, and that’s why most people fail in building a social media brand. This article is about how can we use even our simplest web activity as a marketing effort. It’s about how to use the power of social media as a powerful inbound marketing tool.

How to Select Your Media

This is an important and primary question to answer. Social media ranges from forums, blogs, vlogs, social bookmarks, social networks, micro blogs, etc. The type of media you select depends on how it relates to your industry/market. For example, if your business is based on automobiles, obviously you should find social media sites/portals about  the automotive industry (related to cars, bikes, automobile reviews, etc). If your business is hospitality, find media related to tourism, travels, etc. What you must consider is whether the social media you selected fits to your business and its market. If answer is YES, then go on. It doesn’t matter if it’s a forum, blog or social network, just make sure it’s niche-related.

How to Use Forums as Marketing Channels

Most people consider forums as cheap or don’t value them much as powerful tool for marketing. Actually, forums can do something “big” if you use them properly. It’s obvious that all the new age web 2.0 social media we see today are an extension/expansion from the basic concept of forums in one way or another. What many people do is just register in some forums, participate in some threads and they might not bother much.

How can you generate some business from your participation in forums? Here are some basic suggestions:

1. The first thing you must do is complete your personal profile when you register on any social media site (this is the most basic stuff).
2. The next big thing is to find out where you can place a link to your official/personal website. This is highly important, as this “link” acts as the key to contact you for any means (sometimes a potential client).
3. Make your profile look original and personalize it to any extent you can.
4. Put a signature link (a link to your official/personal website) in every forum you join.

Simply registering in a forum with a complete profile will not help you generate business. You must actively participate in discussion boards, reply to active threads, and create appealing new articles/threads.

Build your brand!
This is a universal law. For the industry/media/people you choose, the value you get for your words depends highly on your “brand.” For example: American presidents’ words appeals more than Russian presidents. The case is similar in forums — if you are reputable, if you have a large number of posts/threads, if people value your words, you will build your brand gradually.  When someone contacts you for business, you will enjoy this brand value for sure.

Your attitude!
This plays another key role in branding/developing a smart profile. Your attitude should be based on one & only one “HELP”. Other members in the forums must feel you are here to “help.” When someone asks some doubts or some questions, give them quiet, good answers and you will see your reputation building up.

Making personal relationships
Making good human relationships with other active members of the forum and disclosing your identity will surely help. When you introduce yourself to a new person, immediately say, “Who you are? What company do you work for? What are your company’s products/services?” If possible, try to tell your new contact how you can help him/her with your products/services to improve his business. Try to re-connect with many useful members frequently.

There’s a lot more to write about forums, but I need to go through many other media so I’ll move on. However, what I have written about forums applies to all other media–it’s all basic stuff that helps with Internet marketing.

How Blogs Can Bring You Business

A deep understanding of your business and market will let you know what niche you should blog about. It’s better to start blogging on your company’s official website — this will increase credibility of your content and blog and add value to your company.

Design and content
A beautiful, attractively designed blog with compelling content will drive natural, relevant traffic to your blog. You need to update this blog daily with the latest, worthy content of your niche. People from different locations may visit your blog via organic results, referrals, or some other social media channels. Some 3 to 5% of these visitors might be looking for products/services that you sell. This may certainly lead to conversions. You must also do SEO/SEM/SMO to bring traffic to your blog. Invite other brand people in your niche to do guest blogging, which can also improve your referral traffic.

Don’t forget:

• A complete, personalised “About Me” page on your blog (add your photo too).
• A special dedicated page “About your company,” detailing your products/services with beautiful pictures.
• A good “Contact Me/Contact Us” page. You should also include your email and contact links in social networking profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

How blog commenting will help
You might have heard of/worked with many people offering “Do follow blog commenting” services. But I don’t worry about whether the commenting is do follow or no follow. What you must do is make appealing comments to blog posts related to your niche, but don’t forget to type in your name and website. If your comment is very good or appealing, people may look to know more about you by visiting your website, which may lead to conversions. You are lucky if you can get into healthy fights in “commenting” (like comment baiting) because such activities will make you noticeable. Chances are that people may visit your blog/website/social profile more often.

How guest blogging helps in marketing
Find some good blogs related to your niche and contact them for guest blogging (most people will agree to let you blog since it provides them with free content). Now write a compelling article related to your industry/market, revealing who you are with a link to your website. Also, don’t forget to write a one liner on what you do and what your company is about.

How to Use Social Networks

Social networks can help in different ways, but the most helpful one is LinkedIn, as it’s dedicated to business networking. Facebook also needs to be considered. Here too, the basic stuff is creating an appealing profile. In LinkedIn, complete your profile with all the achievements/expertise/credentials you can show. After building a profile, start building your network by adding new connections. While selecting a new connection to add, be sure it’s worthy. Always select people related to your industry, and consider who can refer you some business, who can bring you sales, etc. Be helpful in LinkedIn as well–your attitude plays a key role!

Participating in Groups/Communities
LinkedIn offers a good platform for active discussion in Groups. You can also bring traffic to your blog via LinkedIn groups. Write an appealing/controversial post in your blog, and then post that link in a LinkedIn discussion board with a catchy excerpt/one liner. While writing controversial posts, be sure to take a neutral stand or not to hurt a person, which is not a good practice. Similar activity can be done in forums, Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform.

Using Social Bookmarks

How to use Digg, StumbleUpon, etc is a well discussed topic everywhere. If you can get enough diggs to bump your submission to the front page/”popular” category, you can receive a load of traffic.  You can follow this link for a great article about social bookmarks.

Using YouTube/DailyMotion/metacafe

Create an attractive complete profile with links to your personal blog/official website. Here the difference is only in what to create. So far you were to write articles/content, but here it’s a video which can help in marketing. Create a video (shoot a new one) or an animation related to your industry and then upload. Don’t forget to add credits to the video. You can get more traffic if you can create the video based on a good concept/story. Creating fun/satirical videos will also win huge traffic. People watching this video may look at your profile or visit the website shown in the credits, so you are improving your chances of a sale.

Using Micro Blogging Services for Marketing

I will start with a recent example. Last week Dell, using its Twitter account, announced a sale. The discount sale was only for Twitter users, and it worked! Dell has about 50K+ followers on Twitter, and their sale announcements have always worked well. Each of the Twitter users who follow Dell will alert their followers by tweeting them about the offer. With a single tweet, Dell got a chance to expose their offer to 50K people and, additionally, got another 50K tweets about the offer. What an awesome idea! Dell’s decision to limit its sale to Twitter users is another key point because it gives a personalised discount feeling, which will work far better than a general offer.
I hope the Dell story alone is enough to make you aware of the power of social media as a marketing channel. I am winding up my article here and will share my new thoughts in coming articles. To end, practicing the tips given above gives you a chance to expose your products and services via social media marketing. Today I’ve written about the basics of inbound marketing. Studies have proven that Inbound marketing efforts have a 60% chance on closure of a sale, whilst outbound techniques have less than 30%.