Five Tips for Developing An Effective Social Media Contest

Visual media is going to take the online world as a storm. A picture is worth than thousand words and in the same way a video is worth than thousand pictures. Videos are a great way to convey your message effectively to targeted audience. Videos can convey the message in most fastest way. Around 50 hours video are uploaded every minute on YouTube.





More than 600 videos are posted on Twitter every minute. People send double the time of pages that have videos as compared to pages without videos. Mobile video viewing has increased more than 30%. A person who have watched a video of product/service is 75% more likely to purchase that product. A video is the most effective way to convey your product/service to customers. If you haven’t started using videos then it is high time you start thinking and this blogpost will give you a reason:

I recently took part in video contest run by The Center for Internet and Society and Hivos Knowledge Programme where I got to learn more about the importance a video contest has in branding a specific cause. The digital natives video contest offered a platform to bring out creative digital stories that described “What makes your life so click-worthy?”. I choose to participate in the contest to promote genuine social media initiatives. A social media video contest is one of the fastest ways to reach out to a huge number of people.

How to build a successful social media video contest?

There are 5 simple steps to create a successful social media contest.

1) Create a contest idea

The first and foremost thing is to create a contest idea. You should have an interesting contest idea with clear marketing goals.

2) Offer a prize that is worth winning

You need to offer a prize that is worth the time and effort of the participants. The target audience should feel that the contest is something worth playing.

3) Keep Simple Terms and Conditions

You need to make sure that the contest terms and conditions are simple so it interest more people to enter the contest.

4) Use Clear Metrics To Measure Success

It is highly important that you measure the success of the contest. You should measure the success based of reach, participation, buzz created and increased traffic to the website/blog.

5) Announce Results

You should announce the results within the specified time. You should also thank each and everyone for their valuable time and send them the winner list.

As we have now discussed the way to create a successful campaign the next step is to review the outcome from your contest. The main thing behind reviewing the contest is to learn about the shortfalls and mistakes and to correct them in the future contest. Hope you all have got the idea on how to promote your product/services through video contest. A video contest is the best way to reach to a large number of audience in a short span of time.

You can now head to watch my contest entry in the “Digital Native” contest http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-media-dance

Read my original post on  Sexy Social Media

Visual currency converter - Google launches visual currency converter

Google recently launched a visual currency converter tool on homepage. The conversion tool helps you to convert a currency into any other currency format.

Below is the screenshot of Google's  recently launched a visual currency converter tool on homepage.

You can now convert currency from one country currency value to another from the Google.com homepage. The change is good for stock exchange people, financial researchers and business financial analysers.

Think Melbourne, Think Victoria

Almost a month ago on a fine day morning I got a mail from Indiblogger with subject "It's your time to visit Melbourne NOW!". I read the mail and it really touched my heart as it made me think it was a call for me. I had been waiting long to pen down my dreams about Melbourne. I always wanted to visit Australia especially Melbourne. The first thing that came to mind after reading the mail was "Think Melbourne, Think Victoria". Melbourne is the most popular tourist destination in Victoria state, Australia. The reason why this tag came to my mind was due to the Melbourne cricket ground.

                                              (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

I have been hearing about the Melbourne cricket ground from my school days. I had the dream of visiting Melbourne from my childhood days. The contest gives wings to my dream and I can fly up in the air ! Yes, In my dream I can see myself flying to Melbourne, Australia.

I planned to head over to the Official tourism website of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia for visitors from India to learn more about Melbourne attractions, culture, art, dinning and entertainments so that my trip to Melbourne is definitely going to have a well organised travel plan. The website gave me a clear idea on all aspects of Melbourne.

Day 1

The first and foremost thing after breakfast is visiting Melbourne museum to learn about the environment, culture and history of Australia.

                                               (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

The second thing will be a visit to Melbourne Aquarium, the not to be missed attraction in Melbourne. The Aquarium has a 360 degree Oceanarium where I can see live feeding of giant sharks.

                                               (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

I would now love to explore the great maritime history of Australia by stepping on-board and joining the crew on the Polly Woodside.

                                              (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

I would love to do a Melbourne heritage walk and then relax the rest of the day at hotel room.

                                               (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

Day 2

I would love to start the day with a balloon flight over Melbourne, Australia.

                                              (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

Spend the day cruising across Yarra River

                                             (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

Next I will head to Melbourne cricket ground and spend some time in the wonderful ground

                                                (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)
 Finally I will end the day with shopping from Queen Victoria Market

                                              (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)
 Relax the rest of the day at hotel.

Day 3

I would start the day with an Aboriginal Heritage Walk in South Yarra

                                             (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

Next I would spend the day at leisure in Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne

                                             (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)
Relax rest of the day.

Day 4 

Visit Flemington Heritage Centre

                                              (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

Do a walk through Melbourne city outskirts to experience the flat landscape, lush parks and gardens, riverbanks and bayside scenery

                                              (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

Get back to the hotel early and spend the whole night at leisure

Day 5

Early morning after breakfast check out from the hotel and board flight back to India with sweet memories about Melbourne

                                             (Image Courtesy:: http://www.visitvictoria.com)

This blog-post is published as part of  Tourism Victoria's “…it’s your time to visit Melbourne NOW!” contest on Indiblogger

Official site for Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: www.visitmelbourne.com/in

Soak No More Digital Media

We are a generation which saw a lot of changes from Radio to Television, Walkman to iPod, Desktop to Laptop then to Notebook as well as Netbooks, Telephone to Mobile then to Smartphone, Floppy to CD etc. Our generation is now living in a virtual world where everyone love to keep social media relationships more important than real world relationship. We had a good social life but technology and digital media have now acquired the major share of our life. The biggest question now is do technology offer us a better life or it is taking away our skills. I used to remember lot of telephone numbers in my mind before I had my mobile phone. Now all the numbers are in my mobile phone and I hardly remember the phone numbers of my friends. The life today is so much fast that I don't get time to build a relationship with my neighbours and far off relatives. The world is becoming so nuclear that each person is inside a virtual room. We need to break the digital chains and come out to mingle with the society. The most important aspect of human beings is that we need to live as social animals. Now the world is so virtual that we have a digital society instead of a real society. The current scenario is dangerous as the children growing will never learn about the importance of being a social animal. Society is highly important as we need to have good human being in our surroundings. The good and bad in human beings are generated by family, situations, circumstances and the society that mentors each and every person. If there is no real life society then "How can we mentor future generation ?". Every human being should take a strong step to ensure that he built a society that can mentor the next generation.

It is okay to use advanced technology and digital platforms but it shouldn't soak your real life. If digital media starts soaking your real life it is high time you plan ways to pull out of it.

This is my entry to The Surf Excel Matic "Soak No More" contest organised by Indiblogger.

Killer Landing Page Optimisation Techniques & Tips

Have you faced situations where PPC and other Paid Search is not converting while organic traffic results in converting ? This might be a usability issue in your landing page and there might be numerous reasons why this happens.

Here are some of the main factors which might be causing this:

1) Is your Search engine optimized content on the landing page having too much length ?
2) Have you mentioned the highlights of the product/service clearly ? Using a bullet point will make visitors see the features/highlights quickly
3) Do you have more than one call to action ? A visitor should be able to book from the landing page whenever he feels that this is the right product which he has been looking for. Visitors behavior changes from person to person and there should be some
4) We all know that this is a fast paced world so the landing page should be well optimized to give the customer a quick value proposition why he should book our products/services.
5) Loading time of the landing page is an important factor. The desired loading time would be around 10 seconds for a well optimized landing page.
6) Don't repeat content as this will make visitors think that the site is not having valuable information.
7) Design the landing page in such a way that it captures the attention of the visitors as soon as he enters the page and also communicates the primary value proposition to the visitor within the least time.
8) Test different versions of content to attract visitors and test which sort of content is working in PPC campaigns. Use seperate landing pages for PPC with the outcomes.

You can now optimize your landing page based on the above 8 main factors which affects the conversion from Paid Search. You can also do a A/B testing and multivibrate testing to find which landing page is getting more conversions from Paid Search.

Internet is fun with social media

Today each and every child is aware about the latest digital technologia. I used to see the radio when I was a kid. Every house had a radio in that time, after sometime I started to TV. The same way I used to see VCR then came DVD players. I also saw big personal computers (PC's) then the size became small with laptops and netbooks. In my childhood I have seen people writing inland letters and postcards then all of a sudden I started to see people interacting through emails. Technology is developing so fast and we all need to stay updated with the latest technologies. I am so lucky to have been in the digital technology era. The greatest invention of digital technology era is mobile phones. I have seen telephones in my house then after my college days I started to see mobile phones. The mobile phones was then replaced by smart phones and tablets. The most important use of smart phones is that you can keep connected with your friends and family on the move. I am now able to interact with all my friends through my mobile internet.

The most useful thing on mobile is the applications. Every smartphones have a wide range of inbuilt applications. Google Android operating system is reliable and supports a wide range of applications. For me Internet is an inevitable thing as I am working in online marketing industry. Digital media is an advanced version of Internet. In digital media you need to stay connected to digital media through latest technology gadgets. Internet is so fun even when you are marketing. The social media marketing and community management allows me to interact and build strong relationship with people across the world.

Another great way to use internet on mobile is when you are travelling abroad. Vodafone offers smart plans for using mobile aboard.

Today each and every person spends atleast 1 hour on Internet. Soon we will see a generation that will say "I cannot lead a life without internet".

This post is my entry to the Internet is Fun contest by Vodafone in Indiblogger. To learn more visit  www.vodafone.in/fun

Google+ rolls out new version of its profile and pages

Search giant Google has made its intention clear to take up the social media space with Google+, the social network. The most noticeable change is the navigation ribbon on the left. Hover over an icon to get started. The navigation ribbon has all the most used features like games, photos and your personal profile. Google plans to retain its social network users by providing them a pleasant experience. Hope the move to offer more customized experience on the social network keep users interested in Google+.

The search giant now boasts that it has 170 million users since it’s 2011 launch.

The new design also tries to promote the hangout feature. There is a new dedicated hangout page on the site that users can easily access and join on-air video chat hangouts.

If you are a Google+ user then you should be aware of the changes. What do you feel about the new redesign of Google+ ? Is the design strong enough to retain existing users and attaining more users to compete with Facebook ? Do leave your comments.