Kapil Mudholkar's Blog | Digital Marketing Tips & Strategies

Very difficult question to answer! Every media has its own set of rules and regulations, some unwritten and some written, to follow. And every user, whether individual or organizational, is bound to follow them thoroughly to stay in the business. Social media is not an exception to this practice. We all know that social media is all about conversation, and information sharing. Despite this fact, we find individual users and organizations marketing their brand on various social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Some users directly and some indirectly selling their products and services on these platforms. Now, the question to be asked to what extent one can or should push brand through social media? The answer to this question largely depends on the platform you are using for your brand promotion. The basic rule is that you cannot apply same strategy to all social media platforms. It has to be vary from platform to platform, as every platform has its own way of functioning...

I recently had a survey amongst my colleagues on their favorite micro blogging site. They had four options to choose from including Twitter, FriendFeed, Tumblr and Jaiku. Although I had predicted the survey result (obviously Twitter), I wanted to know what really excites users about Twitter. No doubt, Twitter is much more popular and powerful micro blogging platform for users globally. And users, individual and organizations, are using Twitter to its maximum capacity for sharing individual updates, and products and services. Today, I will share some useful tips on how to use Twitter. 1) Find relevant users to follow: Unlike other social platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, finding relevant people and connecting with them becomes much more easier with Twitter. You really don't have to wait for your connection request to be get accepted by the other user. You can just find right people, and start following them instantly. This really makes information sharing easier, simpler, and mo...

Continuing from our conversation on the influence of video marketing in social media, let us move ahead to another important aspect of video marketing. Today, we're going to talk about adding video to your LinkedIn profile. As I said earlier, LinkedIn is one of the influential platforms of social media that can create wonders for you if used properly. LinkedIn allow its users to add various third-party applications to their profile. Later, those applications can be shared with other LinkedIn users. Sharing video is one such important utility that LinkedIn has offered to its users. So, let us see how can we do it. 1) Log in to your LinkedIn account. 2) Once logged in, click on the 'More' tab 3) Click on 'Get more applications' 4) Scroll through the list of available applications 5) Click on the 'Google Presentation' 6) Add this application to your profile 7) Once you add this application to your profile, it will ask you to sign in to your Google Docs account ...

Social media is all about sharing of information. And this information is shared through various means, such as links, text messages, chat, videos, and etc. Every form of sharing comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. But let us not talk about the disadvantages in this discussion. Today, we will talk about the concept of video marketing. YouTube has really altered the way videos are being shared and discussed in today's world. This has forced even the social marketers to make maximum use of video sharing in their marketing campaigns. A small video on company's products and services can be as influential as blogs or posts. Internet users are finding it more easier to find videos on channels like YouTube or Metacafe of their interest and choice. Even these videos can be uploaded to your Facebook account or LinkedIn account, making it simpler for users to spread buzz word about their products and services. Let us go through some key advantages of video sharing briefly. 1...

Social media is like a weaponry that is full of ammunitions and is ready to fire. However, there are chances of backfire if this weaponry is not used properly without proper strategy and planning. Today, I will be sharing some useful tips on how to use social media. 1) Have objective clarity: Any social media campaign without objective clarity is like 'a gun without bullets'. If you want your social media presence to be effective, have clarity of objectives. You should have answers to questions like why am i here? what i want to achieve, and how much time i have to achieve that goal? This will help you plan accurate and effective social media campaign. 2) Have efficiency: You have to be very efficient in your social media presence. This efficiency is in terms of your conversation and interaction with your target audience. In social media, it is very important what you say and how you say. You should not have 'casual' approach towards your conversation with your audience...

I have been terming social media as an 'innovative invention'; however, it is also important to 'innovate' your social media presence. This innovation is the key to bring large number of audience to social media platforms. The openness of these social media platforms allow its users to experiment with your social media strategy. But how to incorporate innovation in your social media strategy? and what can be the focal point of this innovation? There are three simple steps to bring innovation in your social media strategy. 1) Interactive content: We have been seeing various organizations and individual users extending their presence to social platforms as a part of their branding and marketing strategy. Social media is all about conversation, and this conversation has to be interactive and open. You can be selling directly on social media, and this is where most of the organizations go fail with their social media campaign. Social marketing is not about direct selling, i...

The emergence of social media has made 'us' more demanding and restless. We are looking out for tools, techniques, and platforms that can enable us to create our own identity on this 'wild wild web'. And here comes the micro blogging. Micro blogging sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk or Tumblr have really provided social media enthusiasts with 'arms and ammunition' to save their social media presence. Each platform has its own specialty, making them unique and attractive. Personally, I have been using Plurk for couple of weeks now; however, the site has really fascinated me. Its user interface, content presentation, the concept of karma is really exciting and interesting. Going back to the topic of our discussion that these micro blogging sites have really added 'third dimension' to our social media presence. Apart from the conventional blogging on Blogspot or Wordpress, individuals and organizations have found 'short and simple' way to convey...

Very interesting, but tricky, question to answer. If we look at social marketing and communications marketing they seem to be the two sides of one coin. Neither they can be separated nor be integrated. The expert opinion may vary on this occasion, and we may not be able to find unanimous answer for this question. But in my personal opinion, yes, social marketing is all about communications marketing. Your success and failure depends on how you communicate with your customers, how you portray your product or services in front of your target audience, or how unique are you in your approach towards social media. It has become common these days with companies to jump in to the social marketing without any strategy, targeted platforms and vision. This 'trinity' is an essential to achieve success in social marketing, and the base of this trinity is your content or communications. Days have gone where you can update your audience on your products and services through detailed print it...

Yes, I love this topic! LinkedIn is the most favorite social media platform that I love to write about. Today, I am going to talk about the importance of LinkedIn in lead generation. Every business has some lead gathering mechanism in place on its website to collect leads. Now, the important is to generate traffic from other social media resources including LinkedIn to the company website and convert those visits into potential leads. But how one can use LinkedIn for lead generation? Here are some useful tips on how to use LinkedIn for lead generation. 1) LinkedIn network updates: I strongly believe that LinkedIn network updates can strongly be used for lead generation; however, one has to be alert and active on this front. You should share useful information through these updates on a regular basis, encouraging other users to follow you. This helps you reach maximum target audience in one go. The more you share information with others more are the chances of getting connected to like-...

'How to be successful in our respective field' is always going to be the interesting topic to discuss. Various theories have already been written and implemented to attain success in social media strategy. In one of my previous blogs, I have already shared some tips on it. Now, I would be taking this discussion further with some more tips on social media success. So, let's move on! 1) Be Interactive: It's very easy to be on social media platforms. There are lots of sites where an individual or organization can register to initiate its social media campaign. But the challenge is to keep that campaign moving. For that, one has to be interactive. No social media conversation can be successful or fruitful if it takes a static approach. It has to keep pumping itself with interactions and discussions. Especially, for organizations who are using social media as a lead generation tool, they have to follow this interactive approach blindly. It is essential to interact with your ...

It's been a 'wild wild web' (www), and we're, as individual users and organizations, are losing the ground day-by-day. To sustain and increase our online visibility, it is very essential to have a robust and precise social media presence. But how can one set a successful social media campaign? Today, we're gonna talk about some useful tips that can help you to set up your successful social media campaign. So, let us move ahead. 1) Understand your target audience: For any organization, it is very essential to understand its target audience. As a social media user, the organization has to understand how its target audience is using social media. A blind and meaningless conversation between organization and potential customer may cause heavy losses to the former. Therefore, the organization has to be alert and specific while using social media platforms to interact with customers. It is always good to be specific and pro-active in your social media approach. Finally, t...

I have been searching for lots of microblogging sites these days to get more insights into social media. And fortunately, I found Plurk, a new of sharing videos, updates and pictures. I won't be able to write more on Plurk at this point, as I have just started using it. But I cannot control myself to share some basic features of this interesting site. 1) The site really has an interactive user interface. I really liked it. 2) You can share your YouTube video link. 3) You can also update your other social media accounts, such as Facebook, Yahoo!, and Twitter via Plurk. 4) You can also Plurk via your IM accounts like Google chat, MSN, and Yahoo!. There is much more to write about this website; however, sharing just gist of it. I hope you will find this information useful and interesting. Keep reading and stay connected!

I understand that I have been talking constantly about LinkedIn for a while now, but I really believe that LinkedIn is the best social media platform available today for individuals and organizations. Today, I will be sharing one more important tip on LinkedIn. How to customize your LinkedIn profile URL. LinkedIn profile is one of the premium ways of finding place in Google search results. And a customize LinkedIn profile URL can really help finding better results on Google. There are some simple steps to be followed to customize your LinkedIn profile URL. 1) Create a LinkedIn profile if you do not have. 2) Once you create your profile, you will see you LinkedIn page with tabs like Home, Profile, Contacts... 3) Click on the Profile tab. 4) Once you click on the Profile tab, you will get drop down menu items like 'Edit Profile' and 'View Profile'. 5) Click on the 'Edit Profile' tab. 6) With this tab, you can edit all your personal information like current working...

Any marketing or branding message creates more value when it is delivered to various people in one go, like a mass mail. However, sending a mass mail may prove to be a costly affair to the organization who do not have any in-built mechanism to collect relevant database and send regular mails to them. This is very true in terms of small organizations, and they are searching for some similar, yet free, options. In such scenario, the existence of dedicated forums and groups is proved to be beneficial for these organizations. Some popular social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook allow users to participate or create groups that are relevant to their domain. This enables them to connect with their target audience and share important updates with them, and vice-versa. Today, I asked an interesting question on this creation of groups in LinkedIn. My question was which social media platform will you select to create a group within your domain. I have given then four options: LinkedIn, ...

'Return on Investment' (ROI) is the key aspect for any business to measure its performance. Whether to measure sales and marketing activities, or branding activities, this ROI allows businesses to strategically plan and execute their business ideas. Today, social media has occupied the larger chunk of business strategy. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have become the business battlefield, and everyone in this race wants to win. However, it is not that easy to really measure one's social media ROI. Businesses are hiring expert individuals and agencies to perform this herculean task for them. But on what grounds one should, or one can, measure the social media ROI. As business website are becoming the initial communicator between vendors and potential customers, can website performance be taken as a primary step towards ROI measurement of social media. And here analytics comes into the picture. There are various free (Google Analytics) and paid tools are available to measure ...

LinkedIn, no doubt, is the best source of lead generation for businesses. People are using LinkedIn to connect with other members for business networking. LinkedIn allow its members to use various tools that can be effectively and efficiently used to enhance the visibility of their business. And LinkedIn group is one such tool. You can either select an existing LinkedIn group to join, or you can create your own group. It is very simple and free. Once joined, you can start new conversations or become a part of existing conversation by replying to them. This allows you to enhance your group identity and interact with fellow group members. Later, you can invite these members to be a part of your LinkedIn network, allowing you to expand your network. On the other side, you can promote your new group by inviting your connections to be a part of your group. This way you can increase the membership of your group. There's one more option to promote your group. You can use groups you have s...

Groups have become the major asset for social media users. From LinkedIn to Facebook, MySpace to FriendFeed, users can create and manager groups of their choices. Through groups, users can communicate with thousands of other members at one go to promote their business or services. Today, we're going to talk about how to promote your LinkedIn group. LinkedIn allows its users to create and manage group of their own choices. Once you create your own group, it is very essential to promote that group and add new members to it. Let us go through some tips that will allow you to take your groups not only to other LinkedIn users but also enable you to share it on the platforms like Twitter and Facebook. 1) Find groups similar to your group 2) Join these groups (some groups are open to join and some require approval from the group moderator or manager) 3) Share your group with the members of group you have joined. You can directly past your group URL in the discussion tab 4) You can share y...

This seems to be tricky question! But I think if we have to draw one conclusion from this question (or debate), I think, for me at least, the answer would be 'Yes'. We can, rather should, term the emergence of social media as an innovative invention. No doubt, the global community has been using the Internet for a long time now, however, the existence of social media has transformed the way it (the Internet) has been used. From Facebook to Twitter, and LinkedIn to MySpace, social media has really, in true sense, has brought the global community together. The concepts like updates, fans, followers, and connections has really made this platforms happening and live! Is'n it amazing that you can connect and update your friends, family members, loved ones, colleagues, partners, (the list goes on) in multiple platforms in less than a minute (I guess that is the time required to update your Facebook and Twitter status) and that too minimal cost. So you are not only saving your mon...

Google has changed the way individuals manage their web presence. With quality products like Gmail, Blogspot, and Gtalk it has helped users connect and interact easily. Today, I am going to talk about one more Google product, i.e Google Profile. Google Profile allows users to maintain and share their personal information at one destination. And most importantly, it allows users to customize their profile URL, helping others find them easily on the web. Now let's start the process! 1) Create your Google Profile: There are two key benefits of creating your profile on Google: Manage your web presence and increase the web visibility. It is very easy to create your profile on Google. Go to www.google.com/profiles to create your profile. You can create your profile with your existing Gmail ID or can have a new username. 2) Edit your profile: Once you create your profile, you have to go to 'Edit Profile' tab to customize your profile URL. You can create your own customize URL with...