• Share your wisdom - you write more than just a blogpost? may be an ebook, or a whitepaper on your expertise? Upload it on Docstoc
• Connect with other businesses by adding them as a friend on Docstoc
• Put up your latest company offerings on Docstoc, start off with your company profile! Here’s ours:

• Sell your premium content through “DocStore”

Bottomline no matter what your business, you can surely use Docstoc to promote your products and services either directly (with promotional docs) or indirectly (by way of promoting your expertise with a help doc).

Interesting stats about Docstoc:

• Alexa has it at position 720 globally and 477 in America which is not too bad.
• Here’s a graph comparing Docstoc with also started off well as a document-sharing website:

Hope that was one helpful tip. Another (social/professional) networking website to add to your daily dose of social media interactions! :-)

Faster and more relevant search results

With Caffeine, Google aims to use new infrastructure and technology for ‘indexing’ (process of storing a website’s information and organizing it against search results) more information, faster, more comprehensively and show them to the user in an even lesser time. I digged around the web and found an excellent and comprehensive test by Mashable. Click here to view their review and learn how the results differ from the old Google algorithm.

Social Media and Google

You may have already seen the right-hand side bar search options that allow you to search for content on various social media such as blogs, forums, etc. Although, with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, even more UGC (user generated content) in the form of images and videos is being uploaded. In order to cope up with all this, Google needs to be able to show real-time search results as new data is being uploaded every second by the web 2.0 community.

How can you prepare your website for Google Caffeine?
If your website was on the top 10 on the first search engine results page, it is likely that it moved out of it. No worries, if your site has that authority with all the backlinks it needs, its likely that it will boost up back in the top 10 slot if it follows some simple, logical and effective guidelines for search engine optimization (SEO).

If you have no idea what we are talking about, feel free to get in touch and discuss how SEO can help your business and how you can set it up for Google Caffeine!

• Keep it fresh Whether it is your company news, your personal learnings in business, new product launches, sales promotions - keep your content fresh on your website, on your other social media networks.
• Be there in social media! Not to sound too presumptuous, here’s a quick-list of networks your business has got to be on: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube (Got no videos? create one - product launches, testimonials - the ideas are endless)
• Follow web design compatibility standards Always think about the skeleton of your website, the layout, the elements used - does it show right on all browsers? is it a good resolution? are you using the latest web designing language and W3C compatibility standards?
• Be the long-tail: Be more relevant to a narrower targeted audience. Care about those who care about your product/service. With Caffeine, they are more likely to see more relevant results.

Is it live yet?

While there is no official date known for the release; it is being said that already some of Google’s Data centers are serving results based on the Caffeine algorithm. It’s never too late or early to get your site optimized for Google! Start here.

Be smart, do a little research and make sure that your ad campaigns appear crisp and clear. Some other tips for a good ad-copy:

• Utilize high resolution photos - even if that means paying for stock photo at websites. Some recommendations: istockphoto.com, bigstockphoto.com, corbis.com
• Make sure that you hit “Save for Web” and not “Save as” to save your final ad-copies/images. There’s a reason why they have that.
• Try using “web-safe colors” in your color selection palette. It will ensure uniformity of your final image on computers with different graphic configurations

Hopefully, your copy will not look like the one above! Happy marketing!

I came across a well-researched article by eMarketer exploring various aspects of online marketing such as video, search engines, social media and its impact on consumer behavior and governance. It also talks a little bit about internet penetration numbers in the US and the fact that US is still not in the top 10 list of global “broadband leaders,” a measure that takes into account household penetration and the quality of connection. Hope you get some interesting food for thought for your marketing ideas in the new year!

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007406

Here’s the link to download the e-book for free here. You may also buy a physical copy on Amazon here.

It is interesting to see how the city’s trying to attract more visitors in a down economy. They have recently launched a campaign advertising their YouTube channel - not sure how old their channel is but they have given it a fresh look with new videos/playlists and an ad campaign striving to increase subscriber-base, video views and eventually more hotel reservations at Vegas!

On a side note, I did a quick Alexa find to figure which are the top sites for the topic ‘Las Vegas’ and here’s a snapshot:

::Website @ Alexa Traffic Rank::

Vegas.com @ 8363
LasVegas.com @ 37,073
VisitLasVegas.com @ 37,505

After finally graduating from business school, it’s time to get down to business. Today I’m happy to introduce you to Webventurous - a new venture that will provide end-to-end web strategy solutions that are not only scalable but also fit well with your business strategy.

While I’ve provided web services in the past, Webventurous brings with it solutions which are more enterprise-centric, research-driven and fundamentally more useful to the business. In a down economy companies will find lean, efficient and business-focused websites a worthy investment.

If you or someone you know might be interested in our services, visit our website! If you or your referral opts for our services*, we will gladly register their domain name for the first year for FREE.

*Conditions apply

Gradually but painfully (for viewers) Google seems to be squeezing revenue from every video played to increase revenues.

Marketers and communicators are trained to think like dog trainers. The dog is the customer and needs to be made do what the master (the organization) wants it to. That’s old school marketing and communication and it doesn’t work so well on the Web.

To succeed on the Web we need to change our mentality from seeing ourselves as a master to seeing ourselves as an apprentice. The customer is the master and we need to learn about what they need to do right now, and help them do that.

The web customer is purposeful, directed, action-oriented. They are on a journey and we need first and foremost to help them get to their destination. Then and only then have we any chance of introducing to them the idea of taking a new journey.

Here’s a link to the complete article: Web Turns Marketing and Communications on its Head.

Whether you are a job-seeker, a budding CEO or an MBA graduate, in the Web 2.0 world, it is very likely that Your Name is being Googled. This person is either a prospective employer who wants to know what you can bring to an organization or a VC who is curious if you really have those connections in your business domain. As an online brand, these people are your customers and they are always looking to see what you are upto. It is not simply smart to be a part of Linkedin (and the likes) but rather essential.

Here’s a list of 5 must-have profiles that will boost your brand to bring you on top of search engine page results (SERPs) and help you in your career/business/profession:

Linkedin:

Often Linkedin’s power is underestimated but unfortunately, this is only because it is either use inappropriately or not used at all. The point is simple: If you have a Linkedin profile, people will know that you are serious about your career. But you got to keep your profile updated and complete because when people search your name on Google, it’s very likely that your Linkedin profile (i.e. your online resume!) will appear on the SERPs.

One rule of thumb to make the most out of Linkedin: Do at least one activity on your profile per week so people know that you exist! Some examples: add people you met through the week to your network as you meet them, get endorsements/recommendations, answer questions (like you care about them), put up opinion polls, ask questions that you need answers to (trust me, you will never run out of questions). Most of all: be professional, sincere and leverage your network (meaning don’t just keep on adding people to your network for the sake of it!) and people will pay more attention to you - THEY WILL HELP YOU.

Facebook:

“Hey! I’m not uploading my personal albums just to stay ahead in my career”. What if I said that employers want to know what your favorite vaction spot is? Your customers want to know what you are doing in your life other than your career. NO THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUR LIFE SHOULD BE AN OPEN (FACE)BOOK :D! It only means that Facebook is a unique opportunity to show the world ‘you are great person to be around’ - you are the sort that they can discuss politics with, cheer/fight about basketball games and most of all tolerate at the workspace. You don’t need to publicize your Facebook profile but if you have one, you should not be hesistant to add co-workers to your network. Of course, there’s the fine print: You don’t want to be offensive in general and express your opinions using appropriate language. Behave as you would when you are around with your friends (when not drunk) and your friends will look forward to your updates! :D

YourName.TEL:

Does that happen to you? If yes, this could help. If you forget your business card you could just give them your .TEL URL. Since it’s launch in March, it’s likely that your full name is available. Some advantages: 1) Easy-to-remember 2) Optimized for mobile phones 3) Add tags such as ‘finance major student, entrepreneur or marketing intern’ 4) Costs only 15 bux a year and does not require hosting 5) Your info is directly submitted to the DNS thus reducing the lag time to NIL between the updates you make and the changes that appear 6) People can directly call you from your website

Google Profiles:

If you are one of those who has more than one website/blog/profile on the net, this is a useful profile page which brings it all together and makes it more search engine friendly (very likely to show up on the first SERP when someone types in your name). It can list all your links such as Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, etc. along with your interests, positions you hold and contact info. This also allows people to send you a message without having to know your e-mail ID. A safe way to let people get in touch with you. The best part is the Google Maps widget which lets you show the places you have lived in and the ability to share your Flickr albums.

YourName.mp:

I came across the Chi.mp service at one of the Twiistup events I attended earlier this year. If you are like me, you read RSS feeds, use Twitter, Facebook and have a Wordpress blog/blogs. With YourName.mp you can bring together all your updates across various websites for your friends/co-workers to see. The best thing is that you can create different personas - for work, friends, general and other custom personas for your different target audiences. Check mine out here: dhaval.mp. Again this ranks well on search engines.

Go ahead. Dominate ‘Your Name’ on the search engine page results by using these profiles!