Archive for February, 2011

Facebook Advertising Guidelines.

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

With the rise of Facebook, advertising on the platform is bound to become a major marketing tool. The sheer number of users on the site has so far made the ad model a very lucrative option for marketers. The ROIs are comparatively higher than any other advertising platform and, thus, a good bet.

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Facebook Ads

Numerical Advantage

With near 600 million users to target from, Facebook provides for a very large collection of interested audience. Along with a very precise targeting tool, this interested audience could be easily and effectively engaged by a brand. All one needs to do is feed the desired set of combinations and Facebook does the rest. With past experience, it can be said that a budget as low as Rs. 20,000 can get an audience of about 3000 and total impression going as high as 60, 00,000 (In normal CPM language, it is Rs. 3.84). That is a lot of viewing for an advertisement.

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Facebook Advertising Targeting

Hence, keeping in mind the benefits that can be derived from Facebook Advertising, it is very important that we are aware of what are the basic guidelines of the same. The following guidelines apply to all adverts appearing on Facebook, including adverts within canvas pages of Facebook Platform applications.

The Basic Guidelines for Facebook Advertising

Facebook reserves the right to reject or remove advertising that they deem contrary to their advertising philosophy. These guidelines are subject to change at any time and Facebook may waive any of these guidelines at its discretion.

Following these basic do’s and don’ts would help us put up better advertisements quickly and easily.

Do’s:

1. Link the Adverts that contain a URL or domain in the body to that same URL or domain.

2. Clearly represent the company, product or brand that is being advertised

3. Products or services promoted in the advert must be directly available on the landing page

4. Target adverts with adult themes, including contraception, sex education and health conditions to individuals at least 18 years old. Platform adverts should do this via demographic restrictions, not by obtaining user data.

5. All ads must comply to the legal standards of the region it has to be displayed in

6. All intellectual property right should be with the advertiser.

Don’ts:

1. Do not use multiple Facebook accounts for advertising purposes unless given permission by Facebook to do so.

2. Do not automate the creation of accounts or adverts unless given permission by Facebook to do so.

3. Do not put unsubstantiated claims, including but not limited to prices, discounts or product availability.

4. Do not insult, harass or threaten a user or put audio that plays automatically, without a user’s interaction. Any automated animation must cease after 15 seconds and must not replay.

5. Do not use "fake" close behaviour (ie. when a user clicks the ‘close’ icon on the page, the page should close down and no other behaviour should result) on the landing page

6. Do not utilize "mouse trapping" whereby the advertiser does not allow users to use their browser "back button" and traps them on their site and/or present any other unexpected behaviour (for example, navigation to another advert or page).

7. Do not ask to submit Personally Identifiable Information (such as name, date of birth, phone numbers, social security number, physical addresses or email addresses) on the landing page or in the advert, except to enable an ecommerce transaction and where the advert and landing page clearly indicate that a product is being sold.

8. Do not imply any endorsement of the product, service or advert destination by Facebook or should mention that Facebook endorses the ad or the product.

9. Adverts on controversial topics, products or prohibited content shall not be allowed

10. All targeting should be in line with the laws of the country the advert is being targeted and not violate any copyrights.

We hope these simple guidelines gives you an insight to how Facebook Advertising works and what are the promotions you can do and which one you have to avoid.

You can also read more about Facebook Advertising in one of our earlier post, Advertising Goes Social. 

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Posted in Brand Promotion, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Target Audience | 4 Comments »

Bloggerati of the Fortnight: Anuradha Shankar

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Anuradha STravel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind, which can ignite a creative spark in an individual to share their travel stories with the world. It can also give you an alternative path to venture while you wonder what life has in stored for you. One such traveler is Anuradha Shankar.

With a Masters degree in Physics and enrolled for a PhD, Anuradha was all set to become a scientist. But her life had a different path set for her. An avid traveler, she found her calling in sharing her stories with the world. Today she writes on a whole lot of stuff, but mainly on her journeys. Her writing has also fetched a nomination at the Best of Indian Blogosphere 2010 polls.

Humorous and simple, Anuradha’s writing comes across as refreshing and entertaining. It also shows an energetic buoyancy that a travel blog should have.

““Amma, there’s a frog on the toilet seat!!” That was Samhith, shouting loud enough for all the birds in the region to fly away in alarm. The cause of the ruckus turned out to be a tiny fellow sitting calmly on the toilet bowl, seemingly unaware of all the chaos he was causing.”

She has the uncanny knack of infusing a sense of hope in everything she describes. This not only helps to keep the reader glued but also builds up a positive tone. More importantly, it adds a touch of beauty to the entire setting.

“Our journey began on a promising note, as we woke up the first morning in the train, to a sun screened by the mist, and dew covered spider webs all along the track.”

Not the one to miss the irony of the situation, Anuradha is true to her emotions. This is also reflected in her writing, giving the work a much more complete feeling. Also, it works towards compelling the reader to think.

“As time passed and the bears disappeared again, the crowd of kids left, the natural calmness of the jungle returned. Just Samhith and another kid remained, clambering over the rocks like the bear cubs, talking nonsense, and providing entertainment for the others while the bears were away”

But the best part of Anuradha’s writing is the aplomb with which she writes. Every word that she pens down seems to be well thought and well placed. Just like a perfect sunrise with the right amount of light and darkness giving it its mystic charisma and drawing the readers closer to the words they are reading.

“As the sun set over the rocks, even the kids seemed to calm down, and the bears returned,
coming down as far as the road.”

Like every new journey, Anuradha Shankar takes us on a new voyage with every blog post that she writes. Each post composed of its own magic and hidden treasures waiting to be discovered by the readers. And for this, we crown her our “Bloggerati of the Fortnight.”

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Posted in BOTF | 6 Comments »

Quora Quora!

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Do you use Quora? Should you use Quora? In the last couple of weeks, Quora has become the trendy pick as a breakout site for 2011. Traffic increased tremendously in December but then more than doubled again in early January, as per information released on Quora couple of weeks ago.

What’s the noise all about?

Quora is an online knowledge market, founded in June 2009, launched in private beta in January 2010, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Quora aggregates questions and answers on many topics and allows users to collaborate on them.

Quora’s service allows users to ask questions and give answers. Additionally, users can comment on the questions and answers and “upvote” or “downvote” the answers. An “Answer Summary” can be created to reflect the consensus of the community. This summary is a wiki that can be edited by any registered user. Recently a blogging feature called Quora Posts has also been added.

Upvote and Downvote Option

Who is behind the noise?

Co-founded by Adam D’Angelo (Facebook’s former CTO) and Charlie Cheever, it received funding from Benchmark Capital in March 2010, valuing the start-up at a rumored $86 million. Matt Cohler, a former Facebook executive, has taken a board seat at the company.

Co-founder Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever

Why so much of noise?

On December 26, 2010, Robert Scoble, a technology evangelist who earlier was at Microsoft and is known for his prominent blog Scobleizer, blogged ‘Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years?’ This effectively endorsed the site as the next big thing.  PC Magazine, Techcrunch, TNW and FastCompany were amongst the many media outlets that quickly followed.  This, coupled with social graph on-boarding with Twitter, Facebook and email integration, lead to truly viral growth.

Pegged as a reverse blogging site rather than a simple Q&A site, Quora is trying hard to establish itself as an alternate to Yahoo Answers. According to the co-founders of the site, Quora is canvas waiting to be painted upon. “When you come to a question page on Quora and it’s blank there are a bunch of people waiting for the answer. An expert will look at it and say there’s an audience here and I know exactly what they want to hear. And I actually know about this stuff, or know enough to research and produce a really interesting piece of content, and it’s going to go to the perfectly targeted audience who opted in to hearing about this.”

What seems to be giving Quora the edge over other sites is the fact that each response has to be supplemented with the user’s real identity. This makes the answers that more authentic and believable. People say they feel smarter after they use Quora.

The magic of revealing the identity lies in something about the quality of the people and the content. Real discussions break out on Quora all the time. The signal to noise ratio is extremely high. Quora is a great place to find answers about products from prominent people involved with them. It’s also a great place for those prominent people to disagree, publicly. And this gives it a clear advantage of being live and buzzing.

How is the noise being created?

Quora is solving the problem that Google’s been trying to solve forever – creating the database of intentions. The most important thing about searching is to have a properly framed search string that will lead the searcher to the desired result.

In most of the cases, this perfect question has already been framed and been answered. All one needs to do is find it. And that is exactly what Quora is doing. This cuts out the link web that google provides for a query, or avoid the mindless answers people post on Yahoo answer. And unlike Linkedin, where you may get a great answer, you are not restricted to how many questions you can ask or look for.

Has Quora found a voice in India?

Not yet. Though according to Google AdPlanner, Quora has 30,000 unique monthly users in India — around 8% of total Quora users. Most people who use Quora in India are just beginning to get a feel of how this unique platform works. But make no mistake, going by the rate at which Scribd became the place to research for information in India, Quora will soon be amongst the most popular research site. Just for reference, while researching for this article we came across this question on Quora: “What are the key differences in economic policy of China and India?” which had two responses. Suffice to say, this is a great starting point for any researcher.

Finding its footing in India

Quora could do to Google and Yahoo Answers what Facebook did to Orkut and MySpace, make Q&A sites more social and fun. Whether the noise and excitement survives post the initial euphoria will have to be seen. It’s early days but the concept could do well if the quality of the answers remains high and spam remains low.

To read more on Question and Answer site, check our previous post.

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Posted in Social Media, Social Media Research, Target Audience | No Comments »

Bloggerati of the Fortnight: Abhijit Bhaduri

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Blogging is something which anyone can take up. It is not limited to people who are very articulate or very    influential. Although, if you have a knack of using the right words, you will make a better connection with your readers and one such person is, Abhijit Bhaduri.

Mr. Bhaduri works as the Chief Learning Officer for the Wipro group. This Economics graduate from SRCC, New Delhi also has a degree in law and has done Post Graduation in Human Resources from Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur. A theater lover and an actor himself, Abhijit has written several books, hosted a radio show in US and is on the Advisory Board of Wharton’s prestigious program for Chief Learning Officers that is run by the University of Pennsylvania. He is also an advisor on Social Media usage for SHRM in India.

With a career that has seen him work with corporate giants such as Microsoft, PepsiCo, Colgate and Tata Steel, his writing is as distinct from corporate language as day is to night. His writing comes across as simple, elegant and nostalgic. Of course it helps that Abhijit is an accomplished cartoonist. His writing almost always paints the exact picture that you would associate with the words you are reading.

“When you have a snow storm brewing outside, being indoors next to the
fireside is the closest to Heaven one can get.”

So complete is his word illustration that it drives you to think what the result or the outcome of such an event would be. More importantly, it makes you want to experience the words in real life, experience the eventuality of the words.

“Raga Bhatiyar is a raga you listen to as you are still in bed,
in that half asleep half awake state. Almost like what the first day of the calendar feels like.
A little hazy as you still dwell on the last year gone by before you wonder what
lies ahead as the year unfolds.”

His writing is simple. His reactions even simpler. Not the one to shy away from calling a spade a spade, he can drive home the point in a manner most of us will struggle to explain. A classic technique of writing   for the man on the road works brilliantly.

“When he turned director in 2007 with Tare Zameen Par, he made the nation’s parents
feel guilty about living their dreams through their children.”

What works best with Abhijit’s writing is his ability to break complex things down to simplest communication blocks. Blocks which are easy to understand but very difficult to forget. It is this ability of the writer that leaves a lasting impression on his readers mind.

“We are continuously making choices and living with the consequences of making those choices. There are moments when we make a choice and a moment later wish that we could start again.”

The magic with Abhijit Bhaduri’s writing lies in his desire to live an experience and share it with others in the same way as he felt it. And that also makes him our first Bloggerati of the Fortnight.

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Posted in BOTF | 3 Comments »