After a long hiatus owing to a few personal commitments which has kept me busy for a while, I have come back to continue my infrequent updating on the blog. It’s ironical that in the age of Social Media Marketing, actively pursued by individuals and corporates alike, Longhop has such long gaps between posts. Strangely, the current post focuses on highlighting how Social Media can contribute to the success of a business. Obviously, the inspiration to post on Social Media surges from the recent Online Marketing & Media event I attended at the Business Design Centre in Islington.

We have had many opportunities in the past to attend marketing events, but owing to resources we have only managed to attend a few. Each event is a great experience and offers great insightful learning from businesses who share their experiences in such events. One such learning comes from arguably one of the biggest ecommerce businesses in the World, Dell. Internet, as with many online organizations is a part of Dell’s infrastructure. Dell has fully embraced the participatory phase of Social Media Marketing by being actively involved as a listening company. It has firmly believed that messages need to be dynamic and co-created rather than the company being the mouthpiece for all its products. Part of Dell’s initiatives comes from its previous experience of dealing with customers. Jeff Jarvis, a disgruntled Dell Customer and an American journalist launched a crusade against Dell terming his experience as “Dell Hell” and extensively chronicled his communication on his blog Buzzmachine here. Jeff’s outbursts resulted in spreading the negative word about Dell’s customer service and impacting its overall corporate reputation. True, there were hundreds of peevish customers who had experienced Dell Hell before, but it took one influencer like Jeff Jarvis to coalesce into a crowd. The collaborative influence of bloggers in denting Dell’s stronghold launched the company into frenzy and Dell responded by identifying the shift in power and began listening to customers.

So what exactly has Dell been doing? Head to Dell’s Community Website here, which provides a glimpse of Dell’s pursuits in the social marketing arena. It is evident that the company actively engages in an ongoing conversation with customers to learn their perceptions, and to ingrain those perceptions into Dell’s outreach.

• IdeaStorm: Dell launched IdeaStorm in 2007 to engage with customers and to understand their needs and preferences to develop products. It is an incredible market research initiative with an added personal touch. Users are invited to share their ideas and collaborate with each other. This gives a clear idea to Dell about what their potential customers seek and to share these ideas throughout the organization to gain further thoughts to translate these ideas into products. In essence, Dell has converted its customers, non-customers and potential customers into a massive product development team.

“The name is a take-off on the word “brainstorm” and it is our way of building an online community that brings all of us closer to the creative side of technology by allowing you to share ideas and collaborate with one another. The goal is for you, the customer, to tell Dell what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas

Our commitment is to listen to your input and ideas to improve our products and services, and the way we do business. We will do our best to keep you posted on how Dell brings customer ideas to life.”

• Direct2Dell: Direct2Dell is Dell’s corporate blog; it’s a wire service about Dell to the world.
• Dell Forums: As the name suggests, it’s the community forum where users share their thoughts and
• experiences with others.
• Studio Dell: Dell uses videos and podcasts to educate users on various emerging technologies and also offers tips, tricks and support to get the best out of a Dell product. Studio Dell is an interactive communication tool, which also encourages users to post videos of them using Dell products.
• Smart Business 360: A resource center for small businesses offering product support and advice
• ReGeneration & Dell Earth: Websites on sustainable living to emphasize Dell’s environmental commitment, identified as a key strategy to future growth.

These are some of the prominent community initiatives at Dell. The company participates in other popular social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, etc., etc. Customers are no longer interested in a company’s business structure. They seek experiences. They want to be a part of the business, they want to be heard, understanding which can benefit the business itself. Through Dell’s Community Networking initiatives, the company responds positively to customer needs fomenting strong relationships.

One of the perennial debates in the ongoing marketing world is how does a company leverage commercial benefits by participating in social media marketing and how can such campaigns be measured? Dell employs about 40 individuals working on the community network, which includes hundreds of interactions with customers through blogging, forum posting, Yahoo answers, twittering, facebook etc. Is it really worthwhile? How does it benefit the company? Isn’t social media marketing hard to quantify? Firstly, Dell argues that it doesn’t put a cost on social media. Secondly, Dell has gained significant confidence with regard to customer service and customer satisfaction. Here’s a metric then. Dell claims half a million of sales came from Twitter participation last year. That’s just a spoonful in a bucket of water, but it counts nevertheless. Furthermore, traditional metrics such as traffic, click through rates and conversion rates give a skewed image of social media marketing. The best metrics are often those which show how many people are talking about the company positively in the blogosphere, the number of people who subscribe to the site’s content, the number of positive reviews of the companies products or services etc. The best metrics derive on how social media evolves and what companies seek from it. In traditional marketing sense you could call this brand building.

So should all businesses participate in social media? While participation is essential particularly for online businesses, it entirely depends on the organizational objectives as well. If sales and not brand is the driving factor, then social media marketing can be time consuming and resource heavy. This is particularly true for smaller organizations. It’s more like a long term vs. short term strategy. Social media is clearly long term as it helps in creating an everlasting brand awareness which is extremely important to the success and longevity of a business. However, there is a note of caution. Social media is here to stay and it is essential for businesses, small or large, to realign their marketing initiatives to create the fine balance to leverage success.

It’s finally here! A few years after trialling in the US, Google has extended the controversial trademark bidding by opening up the auctioning process to all entities in the sponsored links space. While Google reaps the benefits of a new open space bidding process, this move could fundamentally shift the Search Marketing landscape.

Previously advertisers and brand owners had some sort of insulation to protect and limit their brand related keywords from being auctioned. However, since May 5th 2008, Google has radically changed its trademark policies to encourage competitors to bid on the keywords. The new policy, mirroring the Google’s trademark policy in the US, is certain to rake in plenty of moolah to the world’s biggest search engine.

However, it is the businesses which will suffer owing to inflated CPC prices for their own brand terms. Also, businesses which had previously kept away from internet marketing will be forced to allocate a budget to ensure that their customers aren’t wooed away by the competitors. At the same time, they also have to ensure that the competitors do not take complete liberty of promoting themselves at the cost of their business.

In the UK, some of the larger online businesses like Lastminute, Teletext etc., have already taken up the cause by filing a suit against Google. A few of the smaller companies which are benefiting from Google’s new policies are being bulldozed by their larger counter parts with legal threats.

It’s quite interesting to see how the search marketing industry pans out in the next few weeks.

Are they!?!? Finally, the cricketing world’s biggest event, The DLF IPL Twenty20 is scheduled for a launch today. The biggest names in cricket will battle for pride, honour and of course money in an event spread across 44 days. The Cash rich BCCI, is squeezing out every penny it could get from every source, the media in particular which has come down hard on the administrators over the last few days. Though, most issues are sorted with the media now, it is a bit disappointing to know that websites will not be allowed to cover the event. This is a major setback as major cricketing news sites like Cricinfo, Cricket 365 etc will not be able to delivery up-to-date information on the event to a large community of cricket fans. Anyway, just happened to check the Royal Challengers website prior to the tournament…I was taken aback to see that a match is already in progress and the Royal challengers are on the verge of victory with Rahul Dravid scoring a belligerent 78 off 28 deliveries. Wasim Jaffer’s managed 54 off 46 and the Royal challengers have set a target of 190 to win. In reply, CSS (Not sure which team that is, but has Kumar Sangakkara batting at No.9) have scored 90/9 in 19.5 overs.

Wow…that’s interesting. Further on the right hand side is the points table, which pegs Royal Challengers as the leading team with a Points tally of 16 from 6 matches, ahead of Mumbai Indians by 2 points. Only problem though, none of this actually clicks through to a detailed page. This is the Demo site for Royal Challengers created by some smart developers…I managed to grab the screen before it’s replaced by real information…here you go (Click on image to enlarge)!

By the way, Royal Challengers have appointed the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders, the professional cheer leading team to cheer for the inaugural matches and to train and develop a professional cheer leading team…interesting indeed!!!

The prospect of balmy, sunny days around the corner makes April one of the exciting months of the year. But there’s another reason which adds to my excitement, for in April every year it’s time to renew my mobile phone contract. I have been with Vodafone for three years now and was contemplating leaving Vodafone for exciting offers on O2 or Tmobile. I am after a Blackberry Pearl 8110 with the Blackberry Internet Solution™ and the added functionality of a GPS. Not that I drive, but a GPS is quite handy even while walking point to point (Sounds funny using GPS for Pedestrians, it’s more of a “it’s there, try it” thing). And of course, a Blackberry is no good without the Emails and Internet.

After much thought and deliberation, I rang Vodafone last week to find out about my options of owning a Pearl with the same network. Vodafone doesn’t advertise Blackberry Pearl for individual users…I wonder why!? As Pearl is one of the hottest selling Blackberry devices. However, for business users, they do have attractive tariff. After speaking to their customer services, I was quite convinced that Tmobile is a better option until I stumbled upon the offers by O2. Both the networks offer decent tariff for a Blackberry along with the voice and data plan. I finally decided to call it quits with Vodafone and informed them of leaving and requested for my PAC code. I was assured that the PAC code would be sent within 4-5 days. To my surprise, instead of the PAC code, I got a call from Vodafone retentions department with an offer which not only matched the other two networks but also bettered them. But the only hitch, no GPS subscription with Vodafone as it costs an additional fee!

Vodafone certainly offers free GPS Subsription for Blackberry customers, but I was told that they have stopped including this as a package from the day before they called me. A big lie! Just checked their site this morning on the GPS is still free for 12 months. In any case, Vodafone is offering the GPS service in association with Telmap and it’s possible to buy this service for a one off £39.99 Annual Fee or a £4.99 monthly fee. Sounds good! I took the bait and the device should be delivered anytime soon.

Also, today is the day I complete exactly one year as a Marketing Analyst at ArenaFlowers.com. A year has passed so quickly!

It is amazing how many thoughts and ideas emerge in a forum discussion offering interesting insights into many aspects of a particular topic. I find forums quite useful for many everyday issues I come across where I lack the necessary knowledge or approach to get out of it. Recently, I was gifted a Bose Triport headphones to go with my iPod and though it is an incredible product with brilliant noise amplifying abilities, it does have a major setback. Bose ships these earphones with three pairs of detachable eartips. No matter how careful you are, you end up loosing these eartips very quickly…at least I did. The earphones never stick to your ears and most Triport users are constantly seen holding the earphones closer to their ears to ensure it doesn’t fall off. It is extremely frustrating and you never get to enjoy the music peacefully. And within two weeks of receiving this as a gift, I had lost all my eartips. And the Bose earphone is designed in such a way that you cannot use it without the eartips. How annoying!?!?!

Anyway, my quest to find replace ear tips lead me to find other Bose users who have experienced similar difficulties. Most of these customers have vented their frustrations on forums and I not only found a good number tips from where to get them but also that I could order the eartips directly from Bose free of charge. And of course I found all these on forums. Basically, forums are a great way to connect with like minded people and it makes perfect sense for businesses to host a forum to interact with customers.

The dearth of online forums and message boards in the florist industry is a bit surprising considering that its such a huge market. Of course forums and message boards do not belong to the same age as blogging, social bookmarking and networking, as they are the predecessors of the existing mediums. But forums are great resources where a community of like minded individuals share there knowledge and ideas. Also, it provides a firm base for businesses such as ours to build customer relationships. However, starting and managing a forum is an arduous and time consuming task. Nevertheless, we are convinced that we should be starting a forum to connect with our customers and suppliers. Thanks to Bose’s problematic headphones!

If any of you are experiencing similar issues with Bose Triport Headphones, call their Customer Services on 0800-085-9021. It’s been a few weeks since I complained and am yet to receive mine. I contacted them last week to check the status and was told that they have run out of stock until end of April. Though the headphones are good, I would give a big Thumbs Down for the product unless they come out with an enhanced version. Sad that many of us owning the older versions feel cheated. Sennheiser has better ones!

Recently we have noticed quite a few websites and blogs using fresh flower images from the Arena Flowers site without permission. While we feel privileged to see our flowers on multiple mediums, particularly blogs as they seldom benefit commercially by using our flower images, it is the systematic disregard of commercial websites which is worrying. Controlling the use of content and images of an online medium has been problematic for their owners as an average blogger or a web publisher has little or no idea of copyright laws.

The advent of Web 2.0 has spawned a new generation of public domain websites, where users are encouraged to post their views on a variety of online channels including blogging and social networking. The distribution of product images on these channels by content publishers does help in building the brand awareness for Arena Flowers, but only when explicit references are made to the source of our fresh flower images. Nevertheless, as long as our images are not being used for commercial gains we have no objections, although we would be happy if publishers source the images to our site as a polite gesture for copying. However, we disapprove publishers from benefiting commercially by using our content and images, unless they have a prior permission to do so.

Since the launch of Arena Flowers website, we have seen a couple of sites offering flower delivery services clone our web layouts. However, in the recent past, we were slightly put off by a publisher when he started passing our images as his own to woo customers to his business. When we contacted him to advise him of the potential consequences, he started playing the hardball by arguing that he copied the images as he believed that he was not in violating by taking it from a website which allowed him to save the images on his computer. Of course imitation is a compliment, but copying is not. Either people have a rudimentary knowledge of copyright and trademarks or they they turn a blind eye. For small businesses, when information and digital content is widely available, it is a great temptation to choose the easy path of passing others images as their own to gain access to customers. But they seldom realise the costs of such ignorance.

Firstly, the Intellectual Property Organisation in the UK, clearly states that ownership of content is an automatic right and there’s no need to register for Copyright in the United Kingdom (We are registered trademark owners of our Brand Name and related assoications). Secondly, All of our pages are clearly marked with the Copyright symbol. Finally, for violation of Copyright for commercial gains, criminal charges can be brought resulting in severe fines, compensation and jail for violators. We have initiated the process for further action on the publisher.

Nonetheless, such issues highlight the importance of responsible blogging and publishing in the online world. It is exceedingly important for website publishers to take notice of copyright issues while posting content and media on to their webpages. From our experience during the last few days, we have realised that it is necessary to identify best practice measures for website publishing to avoid unwanted complications.

• Never copy anything from other websites, particularly commercial sites even if it doesn’t have a Copyright symbol. In the UK as with many other countries, authors have an automatic right to the content they create. If you are compelled to use an image or content from a commercial website for non-commercial reasons, always provide a link back to the main website from where the image was obtained.
• If your post needs a picture to convey the message, your best bet is to get the graphic from one of the royalty free image sites like Foto Search. Also, support the Creative Commons by opting to use images rated under the project. Although, Creative Commons is not the legal entity, it is a non-profit organisation working towards creating a universal copyright license.
• It is a great practice to use public domain news websites, Governmental and authority websites for your posts. If you find an interesting post or an article on another website, and wish to comment upon it on your site or blog, use a short quote and provide a link to that source before adding your thoughts and views for refining the point.

By adapting these simple measures, you not only assure your legal rights but it will also help in protecting your own works.

My long cherished dream of learning photography seems to be on track. After much thought and deliberation, I have finally managed to get on to the SLR ladder, through an entry level Sony Alpha 200. Last Sunday, I finally walked into an Argos store and picked up the camera, which kits out with a 18mm-70mm lens. As of now, I have no plans to invest in any accessories, lens or filters, other than the minimum necessities of a Compact Flash card and a carry case.

I haven’t really had an opportunity to explore the Camera as I am still expecting delivery of the memory card from Play.com. However, the first impressions of the camera are outstanding. Complete technical specifications of the camera are listed on the Sony website here. In the past, I had been advised by a couple of friends that I should go for a Canon EOS 400D. But I have always had an inclination to Sony cameras as I have previously owned a Sony T5 Compact. Sony is a new entrant in the SLR market and they have had a fair bit of success with their Alpha range (Ever since they launched the Alpha 100, I had always contemplated buying one). Also, since their acquisition of the Camera & Photo division from Minolta in 2006, the SLR market is braced up for a slew of Sony Cameras.

In 2006, Sony announced their entry to the SLR market through the Konica-Minolta based Alpha 100. At that point of time the camera, though affordable for entry level photography, was a bit out of my budget (I vaguely remember it’s price in the £600 bracket). Subsequently, the company introduced Alpha 700 for advanced photography. In February 2008, Sony announced the extension of their Alpha range by introducing the Alpha 200 & Alpha 350. Alpha 200 is a slighlty modified version of an Alpha 100 and has had favourable reviews.

Considering that am off to Paris, Amsterdam and Athens this Saturday for the big Easter Weekend…it is an ideal time to brush up my basics in photography, before I take it to the next level. Expect to see some good pictures from my trip here…

The sudden drop in PR for Arena Flowers from 5 to 3 has been really frustrating and disappointing. Over the last few months quality links has been the buzzword and to that effect, we have been trying to squeeze out editorially vouched links for the site from related domains. At Arena Flowers, we are really proud of our SEO activities. But the anomalistic (it is indeed) drop in PR has got us racking our brains trying to point the drop to a certain differentiator. What’s more annoying is the drop in all the internal pages. We have about 100, 000 pages indexed in Google of which at least 25 % of them had decent PR and none of them have green liquid anymore. The real disappointment is to see our blog have no PR. Flowers…Uncut is widely followed and we have got so much of appreciation for our site through the blog. We also have hundreds of quality incoming links to the blog. To see the blog have no PR value is a bit disconcerting.

We have scoured the Internet and scouted all the SEO blogs and forums and even had an opinion from a global expert in the industry, without success. SEO experts argue that PR is in no way related to SERPs and traffic and makes little sense to websites, unless the sites are based on selling links. But we see PR as an indicator of our SEO performance apart from the other variables like ranking high on SERPs, traffic etc. Post PR drop, traffic is unaffected and SERPs for competitive keywords have not had any impact. However, the little green bar though irritating, does offer some satisfaction when it is a bit longer than it was previously.

It will be a real bonus if we get to the bottom of our mysterious PR drop on the home page as well as the internal pages. I contemplated posting a query on Matt Cutt’s blog, but decided against it as I feel it would be futile. There are millions of websites and even if 10 % of these websites start querying their site problems with Matt, then he would have to quit his regular job at Google.

It’s all back to square one…wonder how long it takes to be back again!

I have been following the IPL player auctions today and being a Bangalorean, am a bit surprised the way Vijay Mallya, one of the icons of Indian Business has approached the player auctions. Cricket is an extremely competitive sport and going by the current trends in the game, it is quite imminent that you need to have the best of the lot in the team. And the first edition of the DLF Indian Premier League offered just that. The cream of international cricketers. With a hefty purse of $5 million, bidding for players was expected to be intense. Chennai lead the way with a whopping $1.5 million investment on Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the current Indian Captain and poster boy. He was helped by the fact that India’s top cricketers were “relegated” to being icons which assures them 15% higher price than their next best player in the team. Perhaps, the story would be different had Dravid, Sachin, Saurav or even Yuvraj were put on the bidding table.

The fact that Chennai and Hyderabad didn’t have any icon players, ensured that they coughed up the highest bids and it’s no surprise that they went for the best. The current teams after Thursday’s bidding:

Bangalore:

Rahul Dravid (icon), Anil Kumble (US$500,000), Jacques Kallis (US$900,000), Zaheer Khan (US$450,000), Mark Boucher (US$450,000), Cameron White (US$500,000), Wasim Jaffer (US$150,000), Dale Steyn (US$325,000), Nathan Bracken (US$325,000), Shivnarine Chanderpaul (US$200,000)

 Chennai:

Mahendra Singh Dhoni (US$1.5 million), Muttiah Muralitharan (US$600,000), Matthew Hayden (US$375,000), Jacob Oram (US$675,000), Stephen Fleming (US$350,000), Parthiv Patel (US$325,000), Joginder Sharma (US$225,000), Albie Morkel (US$675,000), Suresh Raina (US$650,000), Makhaya Ntini (US$200,000), Michael Hussey (US$350,000)

Delhi:

Virender Sehwag (icon), Daniel Vettori (US$625,000), Shoaib Malik (US$500,000), Mohammad Asif (US$650,000), AB de Villiers (US$300,000), Dinesh Karthik (US$525,000), Farveez Maharoof (US$225,000), Tillakaratne Dilshan (US$250,000), Manoj Tiwary (US$675,000), Gautam Gambhir (US$725,000), Glenn McGrath (US$350,000)

Hyderabad:

Adam Gilchrist (US$700,000), Andrew Symonds (US$1.35 million), Herschelle Gibbs (US$575,000), Shahid Afridi (US$675,000), Scott Styris (US$175,000), VVS Laxman (US$375,000), Rohit Sharma (US$750,000), Chamara Silva (US$100,000), RP Singh (US$875,000), Chaminda Vaas (US$200,000), Nuwan Zoysa (US$110,000)

Jaipur:

Shane Warne (US$450,000), Graeme Smith (US$475,000), Younis Khan (US$225,000), Kamran Akmal (US$150,000), Yusuf Pathan (US$475,000), Mohammad Kaif (US$675,000), Munaf Patel (US$275,000), Justin Langer (US$200,000)

Kolkota:

Sourav Ganguly (icon), Shoaib Akhtar (US$425,000), Ricky Ponting (US$400,000), Brendon McCullum (US$700,000), Chris Gayle (US$800,000), Ajit Agarkar (US$330,000), David Hussey (US$675,000), Ishant Sharma (US$950,000), Murali Kartik (US$425,000), Umar Gul (US$150,000), Tatenda Taibu (US$125,000)

Mohali:

Yuvraj Singh (icon), Mahela Jayawardene (US$475,000), Kumar Sangakkara (US$700,000), Brett Lee (US$900,000), Sreesanth (US$625,000), Irfan Pathan (US$925,000), Ramesh Powar (US$170,000), Piyush Chawla (US$400,000), Simon Katich (US$200,000), Ramnaresh Sarwan (US$225,000)

Mumbai:

Sachin Tendulkar (icon), Sanath Jayasuriya (US$975,000), Harbhajan Singh (US$850,000), Shaun Pollock (US$550,000), Robin Uthappa (US$800,000), Lasith Malinga (US$350,000), Dilhara Fernando (US$150,000), Loots Bosman (US$175,000)

Don’t Worry! There’s no dearth of words yet…

Am back to the blogworld after a pretty long hiatus. Not that I have been doing much lately, just a bit domesticated as I recently moved into a new house. Took a bit of time to get back to the normal state of things. Hard to believe that we are already midway through the second month and January has passed like a day. Now that things are looking set, am hoping that my posts are a bit more frequent.

When I went to India in August, I spent a bit of time browsing through the books (mostly unread) I had accumulated over time. I am quite pleased that I have such a great collection of books, some of them which were given as gifts, some of them borrowed from friends but never returned and some of which I bought! I have been away from home since early 2004 and this wonderful collection of books had gathered a thin film of dust (despite my Mom’s cleaning), which I decided to rid off. I stumbled upon many books which I decided to bring with me to the UK and in the end my luggage grew so heavy that I had to leave behind most of it. How I wish International Airlines to Europe increased their luggage allowance without additional charge!&*+#!?!?

Nevertheless, among a couple of books which evoked my interest was the Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams. Am sure most of us know Dilbert as an Engineer with an inventive mind working in a mismanaged and bureaucratic office full of individuals who are in a state of idiocy for most part (at least for some part) of the day. Rereading the book over the last few days I have begun to see people around me in the same way as Scott visualises Dilbert with his satirical sense of humour. Am not saying much about the book. You have to read it enjoy it. But what about Poop?

Until I complete one of my unfinished posts or come up with a fresh new one, how about a little humour? Read Scott’s post on Death by Frozen Poop and enjoy!