A lot of Indian blogs on blogger seem to have had their TLDs changed from .com to .in. We picked this up today morning and are investigating to see if this is a widespread issue. Strangely, not too many others are talking about this on the internet or blogosphere. It might be because blogger quiety redirects the browser from the original .com URL to the new .in URL. Is this a country specific thing or only in India? India has been known to be a source of a lot of web spam. Blogger is but naturally a victim of such spammy content. This writer’s personal blog was affected – so if they are really looking at spammy, promotional content before deciding to move TLDs, they need to look harder!

2011 was a super year for us. We enjoyed it very much working with our prestigious clients and with our colleagues. There were a lot of things to learn – in UI design, UX, new technologies and the team showed a good positive spirit.

Some of the websites designed by the team in 2011 were www.clubitc.in, microsite for ITC Grand Chola hotel, (first seven star hotel in India by ITC Hotels), microsite for Condenast Traveller and for the Glamour websites (both of these are leading brands in the UK in their respective fields), Maxbupa & many more. We got great feedback for some of this work.

We also designed our first mobile apps and mobile websites – m.itchotels.in, m.welcombreak.com, site for ITC Grand Chola,  Maxbupa mobile apps for Android market

Another area where we started off afresh was in the design of Facebook applications. Now, by the end of the year, we have a good portfolio of work as well as loads of experience designing facebook applications.

Training and development was an important factor contributing to our ability to plunge into new areas. HTML 5, Jquery and CSS3 were the topics we spent our time on. This helps us in designing the layouts on latest & internationally accepted trends.

One of the challenges we faced in 2011 was hiring – rapid growth led to a need for increasing the size of the team.

In 2012, I am quite confident that we will be in a good position to leverage our new competencies. We will continue to work closely with the development team at Envigo to deliver compelling concepts across multiple platforms – web, social and mobile.

It was a watershed year for the social media team at Envigo. From a two people team, we are now a seven people cross functional team which can handle the social media mandate for clients across industries.

Unlike the other teams at Envigo which are very process oriented, we are engagement oriented

Please don’t for a moment think we do not have processes. We have processes but they are slightly different!
If I was to look at the SEO and social media team processes, then, this is how they would compare.

Anything for getting those coveted likes, comments and impressions!!

But here lies a catch. This is not what the client gets to see! We remember to wipe our shoes on our trousers before meeting a client.We are evolving and we try to learn from everyone around us

With a lot of support, encouragement and some push and pull these are the social media campaigns that we ran in 2011:

1. Scientist Bhaskar – Foodles instant noodles by Horlicks
   • http://www.facebook.com/ScientistBhaskar
   • https://twitter.com/#!/scientisbhaskar
   • http://www.youtube.com/user/BhaskarKiKahani
2. Ranbaxy Revital
   1. http://www.facebook.com/MyRevital
   2. www.twitter.com/my_revital
3. Fortune Hotels
   1. http://www.facebook.com/FortuneHotels
   2. http://www.youtube.com/user/FortuneHotelsIndia
   3. www.twitter.com/Fortune_Hotels
4. The Frunos – Eno by GSK
   • http://www.facebook.com/Frunos
   • www.twitter.com/fruno_babli
   • www.twitter.com/fruno_sunny
   •  www.twitter.com/fruno_chintu
   •  www.twitter.com/fruno_JC
   • www.twitter.com/fruno_Guru
   • http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFrunos
5. Max Bupa http://www.facebook.com/MaxBupaHealthInsurance
6. Lifelong Learning – http://www.facebook.com/LFAIndia
7. Stratedge – GSK –Ch Buzz – http://www.facebook.com/GSKCHBuzz
8. The Wine Society of India – http://www.facebook.com/thewinesocietyofindia

It was a mixed bag of brands and we were able to deliver satisfactory campaigns across industry verticals.

In my next blog post I will map the qualities of the social media team which translate into successful social media campaigns. So stay tuned!

2011 was an exciting year for web/application developers at Envigo. The driver was the growth in the mobile and social web. Several studies and statistics pointed at the new customer playgrounds  – places where customers were spending a lot of their time. Clients finally started to take the plunge. Better still, clients agreed to extend a campaign’s touch-points into the mobile and social domains. A campaign could therefore have its micro-site backed by search and banner advertising, but customers could also interact with the campaign on a mobile app or through their facebook wall. Our clients successfully create digital multi-platform marketing campaigns – generating awareness through search and banner advertising, letting the community compete over games and contests on Facebook and finding a way to reach his pocket inside a mobile app.

In 2011, Envigo’s web development team were contacted to provide the following kinds of applications:

• Web development – 2011 was a big year for Ecommerce websites in India.  Businesses finally believe that online ordering has come of age and did not need to be limited only to online travel. Envigo worked on one of India’s most exclusive loyalty programs (Read this blog on Club ITC) and also on an food ordering and home delivery website for a start-up. The requirements for website development almost always included social and search engine friendly modules.
• Facebook applications to generate engagement – Envigo worked on developing games, quizzes, polls, contests, profile pic editors for various fan pages. There were some projects which were for enabling lead capture and tactical promotions. Applications were used to maintain a high level of engagement on the Facebook pages and give fans novel ways of engaging with the Pages, its community and with their friends. We also noted that Facebook is gradually launching platform features which used to be apps earlier. (A lot of the work which we had done for Diditz is now part of Timeline and Facebook photos. We are in no way claiming that Facebook’s product roadmap is being influenced by Envigo, however it is nice to see some of our thinking being validated)
• Mobile applications to drive customer utility – Envigo worked on a few mobile apps which were light on branding specific benefits, but focused more on customer utility. Max Bupa’s HealthFirst application was one of the apps we were involved in. By limiting the apps only for customer utility more than direct sales or lead capture led to an increase in downloads in the initial few weeks and also in the number of times an app was used.

Location and identity should be the two important themes for apps in 2012. Using apps which deliver personalised information depending upon your location will be interesting. It will not only be pull information, which is similar to ‘Google search on mobile’ today, in which a user shares his location and gets algorithmically filetered information directly on the mobile phone. By sharing location with marketeers in a strictly policed (read anti-spam) environment, a customer will be able to enjoy highly relevant information exactly when she needs it.

Think about the possibility when you enter a mall and your phone lights up to tell you that the shoes you have been planning to buy are on the first floor at 30% off!

That’s what we are working on now – watch this space!

ITC hotels and Wills Lifestyle have just launched the Club ITC program. A member will earn points at over 45 ITC Hotels and 75 Wills Lifestyle stores in the country in this program. The Program promises to have exciting redemption options.

Here are some screen shots from one of the most exclusive loyalty programs in the country.

The website has a .NET powered front-end.

Professional qualifications and certifications are limited in the field of online marketing – making the very important. Google’s Adwords professional’s qualification status is probably at the top of the list. I took the exam and qualified sometime back and I thought that I would share some helpful tips with you to make your exam experiment as smooth as possible.

There are two type of Adwords Certification.

-          An Individual Adwords certification.

-          A company Adwords Certification.

Google Adwords Certification Exam Format.

-          Passing Score 85 %.

-          No of Questions 113.

-          No Negative Marking.

-          Exam Completion time 2 hours and once you start the exam you will not be able to pause the exam

and come back later.

-          You can retake the exam once per 7 days, for a $ 50 fee each time.

-          Providing the tester with a review button, which you can click to skip a question and come back to

it at the end of the exam (time permitting).

Here are some tips to pass the Exam.

-          Get familiar with the all the topic covered inAdwordsLearningCenter.

-          Understand in depth the difference in content and search targeting.

-          Understand where to find the information and reports within the different tabs.

-          Have a solid grasp on the latest Adwords Editor.

-          Read the Adwords Editorial guidelines.

-          There is little check box at the top right of the exam page which allow you to mark a question for

later review.  Make sure to check it, otherwise you will never make it back the beginning questions

before times runs out.

-          Focus more on small detail of Google Adwords rather than broad scale ideas.

Focus on My Client center uses and benefits.

2011 was an awesome year for the SEO Team here at Envigo. During this period, the SEO team grew in size and as well as in skills and in acquiring new processes.

Strategies

New linking strategies have been introduced in company which can provide number of quality back links for website. We focused on quality rather than quantity for effective results. The Panda went by without any big bites from our ranks. Page quality has been a centerpiece of our SEO efforts, which helped this a lot this year with Panda.

Content

Due to a rapid scaling up of work, we faced a significant challenge in content. In the past few months, we have made a lot of inroads into creating a team which is able to deliver high quality, uniquely written content for our clients.. We moved away from keywords and embraced themes in our content generation strategy. We have operationalised this strategy by working with content roadmaps for each client.

Tools

A lot of time and effort went into the requirements writing and scoping for LinkedList – our new link building and SEO analysis tool being developed in-house.

We are now in process of creating sustaining web assets – which will act as genuine platforms for content exchange by certain niche communities. By sticking to a few niches, we will be able to gain authority faster. This will help us in related SEO projects.

Training & Hiring 

Hiring was major challenge for us this year. We hire carefully and are willing to evaluate anyone who has put the effort in meeting us. Investments in training bore results. Our philosophy is to groom talent for the future. This means investing time and effort on junior team members, so that they can grow to take on more and more responsibility. No one really trained us on training. This year, I think we are satisfied with the process and results from our training program. The entire SEO knowledge pool has been divided into grades and mapped to job levels. The team here contributed a lot in designing and improving the training program.

Plans for 2012

Our aim is to continue to deliver consistent and reliable results to our clients. We will need to continue to test and innovate various SEO strategies, implement better processes and tools and put it all together to achieve our goals. The highlights for next year are going to be:

-          Launch and rollout of LinkedList

-          Managing a large and growing team

-          Finding talent

-          Improving content quality

-          Launching new services as part of SEO

2011 has been a great year for Envigo. It has gone past very quickly and has not had a dull moment.
I think that means that we were all very busy – growing, hiring, developing new services and products and becoming better at our jobs.
Envigo.co.uk has undergone a revamp – it needs to get one every year or so – only to keep up with the changes at Envigo.
We have invested in improving our processes and in creating IP in some of the fields we work in. We created many different tools – a tool for tracking Fans and engagement for any brand page on Facebook, a tool to manage link building activity and many different games and applications for the facebook pages we manage.
We have made significant inroads in mobile devices. Appavatar, which is Envigo’s mobile division, now has capabilities in Symbian, Iphone and Android platforms. We have made a provisional filing for our first patent on mobile authentication. We are working to launch our first product – a new service which will help brands connect with customers in new and unexpected ways.
Back in Envigo, we will launch LinkedListin early 2012. It is an SEO management tool, which will be used to track and control link building and also provide direct access to clients.
We went to WTM 2011 and met over 150 potential partners. Some of our work was appreciated and I hope that such visits will add to our list of clients and content customers.
Watch this space for all the new rollouts promised for 2012!

Social media has proved to be an evangelist, revolutionising marketing, communications, and the outflow of information. Brands and businesses have always had an access to rich promotional channels, but, the true promise of social media lies in the direct connection and communication. The most beneficial by products of social media are:
1. consumer engagement,
2. creating brand value and
3. building customer loyalty (stated in order of priority)

The dictionary defines engagement as, ‘to attract or hold attention of, engross’. Consumer engagement on the social platform therefore, refers to anything that glues a customer to the brand or business on the social media channel. It could be an update on twitter/tumblr, a page on Facebook, a profile on LinkedIn, an account on Orkut or an upload on you tube. The brand needs to be everywhere and anywhere the consumer is and mere presence is not enough. Of utmost priority is to keep the customer engaged to all the events and updates. The simplest way is to communicate all that takes place within the brand premises so as to build curiosity in order to gain affinity; else the brand needs to get curious about all that lies within the range of interest of the consumer and build affinity. The main idea is to have the consumer coming back to the page or continue searching for the brand.

This however, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Consumer engagement is not tangible, it’s hard to measure or track. The brand/business needs energising and motivating content to remove any kind of viewer fatigue. It is important to establish a personal connect making way for a 2 way process of communication, initiated by the brand. To maintain engagement on the page, it is highly recommended to follow up on each post. A simple thank you note for any feedback/suggestion may not do wonders but not acknowledging consumer action can sure do blunders.

In social media, just like in the real world, presence is felt between people who represent companies and the people who define markets of interest. Engagement helps weave the graph of social significance and success. All brands and businesses are out there, swimming in the ocean of social media, so engagement is the ingredient that serves as a mast, for the brands, against which they can pull their sails and voyage unhindered.

A question asked by hundreds of people in social media is how can they increase the engagement on their pages? The answer to this persistent question is complex but never truly illusive. However, we decided to view the question differently and thereafter, derive an answer to it. The question should really be what makes a particular page so engaging that fans can’t resist interacting with it. The answer really requires cognitive reversal of theories to determine what interaction attributes a successful post that result in a psychologically engaging user experience. Here are a few pointers you must keep in mind each time you wish to start a conversation on a page.
1. Simplicity breeds familiarity
Simple and basic interactive posts do not require too much thinking on part of the user. They are familiar with the language and the message being communicated. And their response to the post is prompt without having to spare a second thought or an extra second.

2. Add details where needed
If the posts are brutally simple and familiar all that it can breed is boredom. Therefore, now a need arises to add necessary details to the content. Once the fan’s mental model of how the page interacts is well formed and fully embedded (known technically as schema formation) to elude boredom and using familiarity add details to the page keeping in mind the profile of the targeted audience and user base. The posts should slowly move on to being user centric addressing their needs, solving their queries and forming a bond.

3. Cleverly Manage response time
The quicker and prompt the reaction time, the better will be the engagement. The aim really is to marry the user needs and the brand page resulting in many loyal customers. Time management can be leveraged to add to the quality and depth of engagement on any page.

4. Measure the engagement and proceed
The engagement on the page can be measured by the likes and comments and interaction per post. But the success really depends on when you can track profile of the most loyal amongst them and interact with them directly, in turn increasing their affinity to the page.