Friday, November 27, 2015

Learn How To Create Actionable Customer-Centric Mobile Marketing Campaigns

In 2015 PEW Research studied the smartphone habits of American adults. This intuitive study revealed that 46 percent of American adults say they "can't live without their smartphone." In 2015 eMarketer also conducted a study on smartphone usage and the predicted impact of mobile advertising. eMarkter's report unveiled that by 2017 over 59 percent of digital search ad dollars will be spent marketing on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. These statistics show that mobile marketing is no longer a passing trend. It is a consumer-centric marketing effort that should be viewed as a chance to speak directly with your intended consumer by making a lasting connection.

5 Tactics To Create Easy-to-Implement Customer-Centric Mobile Marketing Campaigns

1) Tell a story through your blog -- Customer-centric marketing efforts should focus on involving your customers with the story of your brand. Your mobile marketing efforts will need to create mobile-friendly blog posts that can be read in three minutes or less. These blog posts should encourage people to share, like, and comment on what they've just read.

2) Begin a social media conversation
-- Social media conversations are a great way to create customer-centric mobile marketing efforts that focus on a customer's willingness to become involved with your brand. These conversations can also be a great starting point for you to share your latest campaign efforts. Whether it is sharing a new blog post, discussing the merits of a recently published white paper, or promoting your company's latest sale or discount, social media is the perfect platform to appeal to your customers. Be sure to encourage customers to comment by asking questions and don't forget to reply when someone does leave a comment.

3)Design mobile-specific email or SMS marketing campaigns -- Promotional content should focus on the customer and his or her potential needs. The customer doesn't want to be disappointed when they open a SMS or email message. Instead, the customer wants to see something of value. When you are crafting your promotional messages remember that nothing is more valuable than the customer's time. Messages that are succinct and add value are more likely to receive a positive reception.

4) Analyze metrics and make sure that your customers are happy -- Building a successful customer-centric mobile marketing campaign will require you to analyze a few key performance indicators. Ask yourself the following types of questions: how valuable are my customers; how can I attract more like-minded customers; how do I keep customer coming back? The common factor of the aforementioned questions is determining if your customers are happy. If your customer is happy then you know that your customer-centric approach is working. If your customers are dissatisfied, then you need to quickly adjust your efforts so that you don't lose your customers to a competitor.

5) Use proven marketing technology tools -- The right marketing technology tools will help you to gain valuable insights into your gathered customer data. In addition these tools can be used to help you automate certain processes, such as an automated "thank you for your inquiry" response that is designed to let the customer know that their request was heard, and that a company representative will assist them shortly. Marketing automation tools can also be used to deepen customer relationships and improve your customer communication strategy.

The Bottom Line

When it comes to customer-centric mobile marketing campaigns, the customer should always come first. Online sellers, retailers, and service providers need to put an emphasis on customer-centric strategies if they want to truly leverage the power of mobile marketing. By creating customer-centric mobile marketing campaigns you can help your organization create loyal brand ambassadors, build new customer relationships, and increase your ROI.
 


Author Biography 
Sophorn Chhay - Sophorn is an inbound marketer specializing in attracting targeted visitors and generating sales qualified leads. Through Trumpia’s SMS marketing automation solution he helps businesses and organizations communicate effectively with their customers or members. Trumpia is offering a free Mobile Marketing Success Kit so don’t forget to grab your free copy.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

How to remove the numbers in blogger post URL's

This article looks at the numbers that are in web-page addresses created by Blogger, what they mean and how you can influence them.


no symbol over digits section of blog-post website address
When you first publish a post, Blogger assigns a permanent web-address (aka an URL or a permalink) to the post.  I've previously explained how you can control the words used in this hyperlink.

A common question from people who are researching SEO for their blog is "how do I get rid of the numbers in the post-URL?".

Unfortunately the answer is not as straighforward as most people hope for.


Numbers near the start of Blogger URLS

As described in setting the content of your post's permalink, the URL given to posts published in Blogger shows the year and month of the original publication date for the post. I think this is because Blogger was originally set up as an on-line diary, with a lot of the features organised around the post-date.


numbers in the website address of a blog post, as show in Internet Explorer


Today, there are ways of giving your blog a home page, showing your posts in pages, and changing the order of the posts, which let your blog be a lot more than a date-ordered web-log.

Some blogging software (eg Wordpress) lets you choose the structure of the URLs which are used, eg leaving the date out totally, or puting it after the words.

However Blogger does not currently have any way to remove the date-part of the post URLs. And I could be wrong, but my best guess is that this will not change anytime soon.

So what options are available to remove the year and month numbers?

If you just don't want people to know the correct month and year of the post, then you can change the date before you publish the post for the the first time. Maybe make it something non-sensical (eg 1/1/1990). (However do remember that your RSS feed will show the actual date of publication, not the assigned date).

If you have some content where any month-and-year are particularly irrelevant, put it into a Page instead of a Post - because Page URLs don't contain a date.  But remember that you need to give users a way to get to these Pages, and that remember that they are not sent out in your RSS feed, so subscribers won't see the content.

The third - and least attractive - option: is to accept that this is how Blogger works and that you need to live with it or switch to another blogging tool.


Numbers near the end of Blogger URLS

Blogger puts digits at the end of post-URLs in order to make sure that each post ever published has a unique address.

Notice that I said "ever published": if you publish a post, then delete it, and then publish a second post with the same year, month and either title or customized-URL-words, then the second post's URL will have some digits put on the end, to stop it being the same as the first one.

Once a post is published, you cannot remove the digits and keep the same words and month/year.  The only way to avoid them is to make sure that your post-URLs are unique. So if you publish a post and notice that it has digits on the end of the URL, one option is to delete that post, and replace it with one which has a different publication date or customized-URL-words(don't forget to copy the post contents before you delete it!)   Or you could just set it back to draft status, and then publish it again with different and this time unique customized-URL-words.

For example, if you publish and find that you get
www.all-about-cats.com/2012-07/vegetarian-cat-food-recipes01.html
you may want to delete the post, and republish the content in a post with a different date like
www.all-about-cats.com/2012-06/vegetarian-cat-food-recipes.html


Does it really matter?

Crystal 128 karmPersonally I'm not convinced that having numbers in Blogger URL's is a problem.

If the content is so weak, and poorly linked to by other sites and social media that the presence of numbers in the URL is affecting visitor numbers, then it seems to me that there are more important things for you to be worrying about.

On the other hand, if your blog is already popular and well-optimized, and you're looking to get the last possible bit of SEO benefit - you'd be better off using your time to write even more good quanlity, unique, content so that your exisiting subscribers visit more often, instead of fussing over something that you cannot control.

Or am I mistaken?



Related Articles

Setting the custom-URL for a blog post

Giving your blog a home page

Putting Blogger posts into pages

How to set the date for a post

The difference between Posts and Pages

What is RSS and why it matters for bloggers

Removing a post from your blog

Copy the contents between blog posts - and keep all the formatting.

Reason behind Flipkart takes U-turn on app-only strategy & Launches Flipkart Lite

A couple of months back, it was all over the place. Everyone was discussing about it. Be it tech websites or blogs or newspapers or News Channels, all these primary sources debated on the information dispersed that Flipkart, one of the most sorted and trusted online shopping portals, was all geared up for app-only and quit desktop version. Does foraying into an app-only format make sense? It was debated all over with mixed reactions and feedbacks.

App-only: New face of e-commerce

There are no two opinions saying that the Internet usage has increased manifold in the recent past in the country. Ditto the consumption of smartphones. According to reports, Flipkart is getting 70-75% of its total traffic from its mobile app. This was the primary and the most obvious reason behind the idea. Majority of population in India access the internet through smartphones. Yes, we agree that most of the population in India spend their time using their smartphones. Installing an App is always a help. Smartphones is the new face of e-commerce in the near future. Undoubtedly. You can get prompt and immediate alerts and offers on the go. Whether you are vacationing or you are watching a much awaited movie in the cinema hall, you will get best deals and offers instantly on your smartphone.

Revamped mobile version "Flipkart Lite"

Flipkart did the same with Myntra after acquiring it. As per the announcement made, Flipkart should have gone app-only shopping website by September this year, but it did not happen (so far). Moreover, Flipkart has now re-launched their old mobile site in a new bottle and named it ‘Flipkart Lite’. It will be accessible only via Google Chrome on Android phones. Why Now? What made them to do so? Are they planning to shelve their app-only platform idea? Let's put a light on it. But before going any further, it is necessary to understand why they chose only app based platform keeping in mind the stiff competition from other online shopping portals in India.

Instead of going app-only, Flipkart has now reframed its old picture and tried to give it a better and richer look. Recent reports suggest that Flipkart’s new mobile version is built with Google’s input. Google has been trying crawling mobile sites but could not do so effectively. This renovation comes with some cool features - option to add the Flipkart Lite page to the homescreen on chrome for better accessibility.

Switching back to m-version. Why?

For beginners, who just started using smartphones (especially middle aged people), it would be so difficult for them to surf and buy products using apps. Limited storage space and continuous internet data consumption - these two smartphone problems usually faced by most of the smartphone using population. Such problems will be solved with the site's mobile version. A smartphone user can access to the mobile site as per its convenience and with limited data consumption.

After converting Myntra into app-only format, the company witnessed the dip of 10% in their next sales figures. It is evident that there are chunks of people in India who still wants to buy products online using laptops or desktop. Browsing through desktop and laptop helps you making better buying decision. Thanks to bigger screen and better image quality. Flipkart has 25% of its total consumers are still using traditional ways to shop online - Computers. Taking a risk of losing 25% of sales is a nightmare for any company.

We understand and agree that a smartphone user (or an App) user can get prompt push notifications, customized offers. But restricting online shoppers to just apps is too risky.


Note: If you are looking for flipkart coupons & offers which are valid on desktop, Flipkart-Lite & Mobile App, here is list of all offer: http://33coupons.in/flipkart-today-offers.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

What’s New on the iPhone 6S

What’s New on the iPhone 6S
Image Source http://goo.gl/XNosfH 

The latest Apple product is being released, and Mac lovers have been lining up to get their hands on the iPhone 6s. So what makes this product so special? Besides the expected software updates and advanced Touch ID, faster 4G and Wi-Fi connections, a sleeker design with a rose gold finish and of course iOS9; what are some of the new features that iPhone-fanatics can look forward to? Since Bend-gate there have been speculations regarding just how durable the latest iPhone will be. Apple have addressed this and have engineered a new alloy of 7000 Series aluminium, the same used in the aerospace industry, to ensure your phone won’t bend in your pocket. But that’s not all they have to offer.

See some of the top new specs below:

3D Touch

This is perhaps the most exciting of the new features of the iPhone 6S. This revolutionary technology combines software and hardware to bring a new dimension of functionality to using your phone. As well as the now familiar touch gestures like Tap, Swipe and Pinch, 3D Touch introduces what Apple refers to as “Peek and Pop”. Basically, with 3D Touch your phone registers how much pressure you put on your screen. If you select an icon/message/web page, it will open or Peek out; so you get an idea of what it contains. If you want to go into that web page or message you just have to press a little harder and it will “Pop” open. It also enables the user to make even shorter shortcuts to the camera, messaging and map apps from the home screen. Seeing Apples iPhone 6S in action, it appears to be a sleek transition and one which makes the phone that bit more covetable to this tech-loving writer.

Breath-taking New Camera

The camera in the iPhone 6S has 12 megapixels and the shots it takes are absolutely stunning. It’s clearer than my own vision. Apple claims that a camera this good won’t need re-touches or filters on photos – although I doubt that will stop all the Instagrammers out there. If anything, this will just step up their game. The new iPhone can also take videos four times 1080p meaning your videos will look like something from the silver screen, in the palm of your hand.

Do you take a lot of selfies? The front facing camera – for Facetiming and selfie-taking – is high definition 5 megapixels. All the better to see yourself with. The iPhone 6S also has a new function: Retina Flash, a flash three times brighter than the previous generation. This, combined with Apple’s True Tone Tech, allows you to have perfectly lit selfies no matter where you’re taking the photo. 

Live Photos

As well as having a crisp and clearer shot, the iPhone 6S also enables the user to take Live Photos, literally capturing a moment in time just before and after you take the photo, with movement and sound. Like sleeker gifs if you will. You can activate the live photos simply by selecting a photo and you can also view them on your other Apple devices, and share them around.

Computer-Like Performance

The iPhone 6s is run by a 64-bit A9 chip. This chip empowers the iPhone 6S which 70% faster CPU (than the previous iPhone) and 90% GPU; meaning you can enjoy games, apps and videos with far better results. Apple goes for far as to say that it is as immersive as playing a video-game on your desktop or game console.

So, will you be lining up with the rest of them to get this beauty?



Authors Bio:
Orlaith Costello writes for The PC Doctor, a fan of all things tech-related, she’s had a keen interest in IT and programming since the age of 8. Nurtured from a young age she has shares her opinions on IT news, smartphones, apps, or Google’s latest updates.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Using Labels to categorize your Blogger Posts

This article explains how to use Labels to categorise the Posts in your Blog, and how you can get around some of the limitations in Blogger's categorising tools.

Why categorise your Posts

watermelon salad recipe can be labelled / tagged as  fruit, salad, dessert and pink
Grouping your blog's contents makes it easier for people who have reached your blog via Search to find other posts that they may be interested in - provided you add tools to your blog that let them navigate using labels.

It's essential if you want to make it look like you have put your Posts into Pages.

And it helps you to find posts yourself.


Blogger's tools for working with categories

The only tool that Blogger provides for categorising or grouping Posts is Labels.

In short, Labels are tags that you apply to posts.

Each post can have as many Labels as you want (there is an upper limit of 5000 labels-per-blog, but most people don't get near it).

And you can use labels for different purposes.  For example, a post titled "Photographing Long-haired Black Cats" could have three different labels
  • Cats - the the animal it's about
  • Photography - for the functional category
  • Jane Smith - for the author
The Labels gadget lets readers choose which groups of posts to see:  when a visitor clicks an item on the labels gadget, they are shown a list of posts that have the selected label applied to them.

You can add the Labels gadget as many times as you like, selecting which specific label values to show each time.   In the example above, you might add it three times, once for ainmals (showing Cats, Dogs and Rabbits), once for function (showing feeding, grooming and photography), and once for author (showing Jane Smith and Joe Bloggs).

There are three steps that you need to follow to make effective use of Labels in Blogger.


How to add Labels to your blog

Step 1:    Label your Posts

For each post, add one or more labels.  You can add labels either:
  • In the post-editor, in the Labels section at the right side of the post-editor o
  • From the Posts tab, tick the posts you want to put the labels on, and then use the drop down arrow from the top icon that looks like a small luggage-tag:   choose the label or "New label ...").

Step 2:    Add the labels gadget

Add the Labels gadget to your blog - the same way you would add any other gadget .   You can add it as many times as you need, choosing which labels to show each time.
 
Warning:  If you choose to show only a certain selection of Labels in a gadget, then this is all that it will show even if you add new labels to your posts later on.  However if you don't restrict which labels are shown, then new ones are automatically shown in the gadget if they are associated with published posts.

Drag-and-drop the labels gadget to wherever you want it:  some people put it just underneath their header, to make readers think they've looking at a more traditional web-page.

Step 3:   Add Labels navigation

Another way for your readers access labels is from the display in the post header or footer of the list of labels assigned to each post.

This is turned on by default in most themes:  you can change the setting and move it around using post-templete settings found under  Layout > Blog Posts (edit).




What your visitors see


A List of Posts:

If a visitor to your blog clicks on an item in the labels gadget or in the labels-list that is show for apost, then the "labels-view screen" is used to show them the posts that have the selected label.

This screen is like the main screen: is only shows a certain number of posts and visitors need to use the newer-posts and older-posts links to move back through the list.

Like the main screen, if you have used jump-breaks in your posts, then the list only shows the first part of each post.  If you haven't used jump-breaks, then the whole posts are shown.



A summary message:

Unlike the main screen, in most themes there is a message at the top of the page saying:
"Showing newest posts with label WHAT-EVER-YOU-CHOSE. Show older posts"

Or if there are no published posts with the selected Label, the message is slightly different.  Some people change their theme to customise or remove this message:  Chuck in The Real Blogger Status has written an excellent description of  how to do this.


What Labels aren't - but appear to be

Many people think that Labels are a way of actually putting Posts into pages.  However the Posts aren't actually moved around.  The labels-screen is just a way of viewing a smaller-than-usual group of Posts, and can make it look like you have put your posts into sub-pages.


Making multi-level categories

Currently, Blogger only supports one level of grouping.  The only way you can make sub-groups of Labels is to add two categories to each post - one for the "major" category, and one for the "minor" category

For example you might use labels like these
Major category:  Minor categories:
Recipes: Sweet, Savory, Wheat-free
Party-games: ice-breaker, run-around, silent, outdoor
Music: lively, soft & gentle, traditional, instrumental
Each post would need to have at least one label from the major category, and one from the minor categories.

If you do this, you need to be clever about adding two levels of gadget, with only a selected group of labels shown in each gadget.   You might even need to edit your theme, to only show certain gadgets in certain situations.



Related Articles

Posts, Pages and Navigation

Setting what goes on the Home Page

Editing your blog's theme:  advantages and disadvantages

Making it look like you have put your posts into pages.

Copying all the posts from one blog to another

This article is about how to copy all the posts from one blog to another, using Blogger.  There is a separate article about copying individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another.

To copy all the Posts from one blog to another, you need to export them from the first blog, and import the file that was created into the second file.

Any Pages (see The Difference between Posts and Pages) in the first blog, need to be moved individually, because pages aren't currently included in the export file.
If you want to totally replace the contents of the destination blog with the contents of the source blog, then you should delete the existing posts from the destination blog before you import the file.  (NB   Delete posts by going to the Posting / Edit Posts screen, and pressing the Delete button that is beside the post.   Don't delete the entire blog, or you will lose access to the URL).


Follow these steps to copy all posts from one blog to another

1  Log in to Blogger.

2  Go to the export tab from the  Settings / Other tab.

3  Click on Export Blog.

Export-blog window on the old Blogger interface:
the new interface looks a little different, but has the same links

3a  If you are using the new interface, click Download Blog on the confirmation message window:



4  Your computer will download a file.   For Windows users, it will probably be put in the My Documents / Downloads file.  Or you system may use another place, or it may ask you where to put it.   Whatever happens, you will need to know where this file is saved to.

5  Open the blog that you want to move the posts to
(You may need to log out and in again, or perhaps just switch to different browser or tab)

Delete (using Posting / Edit Posts) any Posts that are already there, but which you don't want in the refreshed blog.

6  Go to Settings > Other and click Import Blog.  When the box opens, choose the exported file that you made earlier, and enter the security-text.
Import file selection screen in the new interface:
the old version of Blogger is very similar.

7  Choose whether or not to automatically publish all imported posts.  
Only tick the box if you DO want the posts automatically imported.   If you don't tick it, the posts will be loaded, but with have status of Draft, so won't be visible by readers until you publish them.

8  Click Import Blog.

Check that the import worked successfully, by looking at the blog, and also at the list of posts under Edit Posts:  are the right number of posts there, do they have the right labels etc.


Results

IMG redCowRoadworks4586All the posts from the source blog will be copied to the destination blog.

Many of the post characteristics will be the same as in the original blog.  This includes:
  • title
  • post contents
  • published-date and time
  • label(s)
  • post-author.


Any comments from the source blog will also be copied over - sometimes it takes a few hours for the links for them to be re-establshed properly.

The URL for each post will be based on the URL of the blog you have imported them into and the publication-date that the posts had in the source blog - for example:
www.YourNewBlogName.blogspot.com /2009/05/name-based-on-post-title.html

Any internal links in the blog will still point to the post in the old blog
For example this link points to a popular article in Blogger-HAT.  
If I export-and-imported this post into a new blog, the link would still point to the same place, ie the post in Blogger-HAT - not to the post in the new blog.

Any pictures, videos etc in the old blog will still be in the same place that they were in (Picasa-web-albums, YouTube, Google Videos etc).

If you have imported more than the number of posts that Blogger allows per day (currently 50 I think) then to make any more posts today you will need to complete the captcha-test (ie entering the letters in the funny-shaped word).   This will go away approximately 24 hours after you last enter more that the maximum-posts-per-day.


Importing to the same blog

If you try to import posts into the same blog that you exported them from, Blogger will not import any posts, and give you an error message.

If you do want to do this (eg to create a duplicate set of posts), then do the export, change some small detail of the original posts title or date/time, and then do the import.



Related Articles

The Difference between Posts and Pages

Moving individual posts, or pages, from one blog to another

Converting Posts into Pages

Moving some posts form one blog to another 

Deleting blogs and blog-posts