Hangout Now With Your Employees Globally With Google Plus

Google Plus is one of the latest addition to the increasingly building social media networks globally. Though there is a facebook, a twitter already existing, Google + is the latest social media network, which lets you do much more.

Great, but how is it beneficial for emerging businesses?
Every product has a certain market to address and is made with a vision, which largely defines its features and how it is building up. Google + in the similar manner has various features with which it is aiming to engage the TG and evolve the social networking online.

The screen capture above shows how Google Plus looks like!

Hangouts, the game changer!
One of the most interesting features of Google + is the hang-outs. Most emerging businesses always are on the look out for smarter tools which help them take their game to the next level by smartly saving operational costs. Google + hangouts help SMEs connect with their closed network while being online in the format of a video conference.

How do I create and join a Hangout?
One of the strongest features of Google Plus, the Hangout, is easy to work with. All you need to do is click the link on the bottom right which says "Start a Hangout" in green color! Once you do, a new pop-up window appears which shows you the following screen as shown in the screen capture below:

All you need to do to start a video conference with the closed group of people that you have is to click the hangout button in the green color and start the video call. Its free and you can catch up with anyone in your circle "professional" at any point of time, while all have to be logged into the Google network.

And you don't have to log out of your Emails!

While you are in a hangout, you can all the time be logged into your Gmail and do everything you wish to. It automatically figures out your laptop camera and hence you don't really need to do anything else to start a hangout.

How does it help my business?

In the simplest of its essence, a hangout can help small businesses to essentially cut down on cost and time and get global teams together to manage projects, quickly have a discussion around a focused topic and get the execution on track at all times. It can also help you do a virtual walk-through of your progress as an emerging company with your investors and other stakeholders.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about.

Track The Relevant Twitter Conversations for Your Brand With: Twitter Search

What does the image above show? Well, not much than just another text box which looks like the google search engine. What you got right are the last two words which say "search engine". While social media is changing the way businesses engage their target audience, twitter is emerging as one of the most interesting tool online for businesses to reach out to its target audience.

While you can be on twitter and start thinking of reaching out to your TG with just 140 characters, there's a far better and strategic approach online which can help you track all the relevant twitter conversations, which might have impact on your business.

How do you do it?

Lets take an example. If you are a B2B business all you need to do to track all relevant conversations on twitter mentioning B2B is, to search twitter with the hashtag #B2B and twitter search will display all possible search results.

The screen capture below shows a simple search with #B2B on twitter search and how it shows all the possible conversations globally using the #tag: #B2B:

Connect with the relevant TG

Once you have the search results with you, you can now start connecting with the relevant people, who are part of the discussion. Eg, taking cue from the above screen capture, we can simply click on any of the twitter handles of users, whose tweets seem relevant to us.

Obviously you can follow these people who you find relevant, to simultaneously connect with them, you can simply send them a connecting tweet by mentioning their twitter handle with an "@" sign. Example: @e4mtweets Interesting to read your tweet on media. Look forward to more such stories!

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about

Now Get The Social engagement Analytics For Your Website on: Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one tool which has been there since a long time now. Almost every website has it and it allows users to get access to some high quality metrics, which enable the website owners to understand how their website is performing.

More importantly for the Small and Medium enterprises, Google Analytics has been the top tool, which has helped them to assess the actual effectiveness of their online properties. With businesses going global online, its actually crucial to understand how your website is performing and what kind of audience is it attracting, from which geographies etc.

What about Social Media?
Google Analytics was lacking this pointer, but lately with the launch og Google+ (their newest social network) a whole new feature on Google Analytics called "Social Engagement" actually lets you understand the impact made on your website not only by the +1's done to your content by people all over the world, but also the tweets and the facebook likes.

As shown in the screen capture below:

You can now measure social engagement on the content shared on your website from across major social networks globally including Google+, facebook and twitter. This obviously helps you understand how is your content engaging your TG on the various social networks.

Obviously you do need to activate social tracking from the various social networks on google analytics, though the Google+ results will come to you automatically. To know how to integrate the various social networks on your site to know the social engagement factor, read the following Google help link: http://www.google.com/support/analyticshelp/bin/answer.py?answer=1316556&topic=1316551

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about

Be Statistically Sharp on Twitter: tweetstats

Many SMEs are today on twitter. Some really are gaining out of it, the others simply are there, to be on the social media bandwagon. These SMEs are facing the real question now, as to be or not to be. They are now looking at finding the right reasons to be on twitter and how to manage their accounts well, such that they actually drive their business objectives of being on twitter.

How do I get sensible statistics on twitter?
There are many tools which give you free statistics on your twitter presence and allow you to understand what your twitter presence is being all about.

The above graphs show your tweet timeline and calculates the number of tweets per day and the number of tweets per month. Also it shows your tweet density. This actually allows you to understand as to how active are you on twitter and what sort of target audience are you reaching out to. In its basic essence it actually shows are you doing enough on twitter?

Looking at the stats above you can actually see if you are re-tweeting to connect with some focused audience on twitter, are you doing it right? Also, if you are replying to someone, who are you replying to. This establishes your activity on twitter and actually helps you understand if your twitter account is actually connecting with the right and relevant people to your business or not?!

And how do I get all these stats?

Simply go to the following URL : www.tweetstats.com and you will see the following home screen:

All you need to do is to enter your twitter handle inside the "textbox" and the rest the software will do automatically for you. This will help you understand your twitter usage trends and to better the same.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Engage Your Facebook Audience With @facebook.com Email Id

If you still haven't claimed your @facebook.com email id, you are missing out on some relevant action for your business. facebook launched he @facebook.com messaging system with its offer to its users to claim their email Ids for free. So now eve if I am not logged into facebook, anyone can send me a message at my facebook Email id.

How do I get a @facebook.com email Id?
Its simple. Go to the facebook message inbox and click the "Claim Your facebook Email Link", as shown in the screen capture below:

Once done, you will quickly have yourname/ your business name @facebook.com. Obviously it depends upon the availability of the email id. In general your profile name (which is again unique) becomes your Email Id. Eg: profile: facebook.com/indiamart, the Email id would be: indiamart@facebook.com

Can I send messages from this Id

Yes you can! a facebook Email id is as similar to your existing real world Email Id, just that whe you send Emails from this Id, they go to the external world formatted as a facebook message, with your profile picture etc, which recognizes that the mail is from your fb Id.

How is it useful for SMEs?

SMEs can strongly target their facebook users while messaging only through facebook. Any responses form the same will help the SMEs understand the conversion ratio of their facebook fan base. This will help in determining the cost for the business to leverage social media and the ROI delivered.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Measure The Success of Your Email Marketing Campaigns

One of the strongest tools for any SME to reach out to its intended target audience, is Email Marketing. Its low cost, its fast, easy to use and engaging. Email marketing has all the basic features available for it to be widely used by start-ups and SMEs as the first approach to increasing outreach in the online world.

But how do we measure the success of the Email Marketing Campaign?
Many companies must have done Email marketing campaigns before, but getting the right ROI from it, requires a deep understanding of some basic fundamentals, which will help you generate numbers from your Email marketing campaign.

Click Through Rate [CTR]
To put it simply, this is one number you get when your intended user actually clicks on any of the embedded links in your email message. This essentially gives out the interest of the audience into your message and also about the quality of your content, such that the useer is actually able to take an action which you intended for them.

So how do you calculate CTR?
Its a simple formula: Number of Unique Email Clicked/ (Total Emails sent - Emails Bounced) * 100. This will easily give you the CTR as a percentage, which obviously will help you understand the success ratio of your campaign.

Generally your Email marketing provider/ software (if you are using one) gives you the CTR and the core details, which defines the success of your Email marketing campaign. Overtime this number also helps you understand your user better and hence helps you improve your call to action and design of the Email campaign.

Conversions
Simply speaking, conversions represent the number of Unique Emails which led to a buying decision (sale)/ OR a subscription to what you intended to. You can easily track conversions by creating a landing page for all the traffic coming from your emails onto your website, and have a form t be filled up there. The number of clicks which land onto your landing page Vs the form filling up, will give you a fair idea of how effective your Email marketing campaign is.

The Time Given By The User
How about getting to know, how much time did your user spent on your Email, which sections of the mail did he/ she see the longest etc? These numbers are available with your email marketing software provider. These can really help you understand what is your user excited about and what is the time being given by the user on which part of the Email.

Going Viral Rate
This is one statistic which is not implied for every email marketing campaign, but to most of them. Generally when marketeers create the Email marketing campaigns, they try and include a viral aspect to it. Virality basically means some element in your Email campaign, which engages the user and asks him. her to forward the campaign.

Source: http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/qenyuuefykiu/zeqzy8/email-marketing3.jpg

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Don't Have Budgets for Television, Make YouTube Work For Your Business

One of the biggest challenge with almost every Small and Medium Enterprise today is of allocating marketing budgets while leveraging the various available options to increase outreach to the relevant target audience.

The engagement factor!
Almost everyone agrees to the fact that if you see a review of a mobile phone working in front of you on a screen, rather than a piece of text reviewing it with photographs, it makes it more engaging and results in better understanding of the product and also increases the chances of the viewer taking an action, like picking up the phone and enquiring more about the product!

But TV, we don't have the budgets!
For an SME, airing a commercial on TV is out of question. With bootstrapped budgets, SMEs are bound to look out for innovative ways of reaching out and engaging their audience. But if video is the way to go, then what options do the SMEs have?

Get a branded channel on YouTube!
How about having your own video show which gets updated each week for your customers? Instead of doing Email newsletters, you o video news letters, in which you update your customers of the latest additions to business and engage them in your conversation? Well, its fairly easy to do!

Create a YouTube account!
Go to www.youtube.com and you can either create a stand-alone account on YouTube OR else login with your Gmail account. Once you are logged in, you will reach onto the HomePage, which will look as shown in the screen capture below:

On the top right corner of the screen, there will be a drop-down with your channel name, as shown in the screen capture below:

Click on the "Channel" option as shown in the screen capture above. Once you do, you will be re-directed to your personalized channel on YouTube, which will look something like as shown in the screen capture below:

To customize your channel with your own branding etc. all you need to do is click on settings in the top menu over your channel and then click on the "Themes and Colors" tab, which will show you the following screen:

You can now choose the color of your text, set the background image, by uploading any image you want from your computer. This helps you create a powerfully branded channel, which ensures that whenever your users land upto your channel, they see a properly branded YouTube channel with your videos playing!

There are many such ways with which you can create powerfully branded properties online, such that your target audience engage with your brand and communication in a streamlined and properly guided manner. To know more on how you can leverage YouTube to engage your audience, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will get connected with you!

Recruit Talent With Zoho Recruit

One of the most interesting product companies in India, Zoho, has recently launched an interesting application called Zoho Recruit, which is a tool for HR departments and Staffing companies to connect with the relevant talent in the market.

Especially for the Small and Medium enterprises, Zoho Recruit presents a fantastic opportunity to reduce cost of talent acquisition, while ensuring quality talent. Talent acquisition being one of the key challenges for any start-up/ growing business, Zoho Recruit goes a long way in helping SMEs reach out to the right talent.

What is Zoho Recruit?
Zoho Recruit is essentially an application tracking system that helps HR professionals source and reach candidates. Another of the powerful suite of applications by Zoho, the application tracking system helps HR professionals keep a strong track of the relevant CVs in the databases and hence connect with just the relevant resources when the need arises.

What Are The Various Features?
The various features of Zoho Recruit are:

• Reach out to the relevant candidates (sourcing):

Resume gathering from multiple sources is one part of the overall process for HR folks, Zoho Recruit helps in gathering resumes from multiple sources and do the initial filtering which obviously helps in resume screening more quickly.

• Managing Applications

Managing hundreds and at times thousands of applications for many different open positions is a challenge which the Zoho Recruit tool helps you work upon. You can manage resumes and track the candidates throughout the interviewing process. You can schedule interviews, send automatic e-mail notifications and log candidate activities and notes.

• Search, Parse and Lock Resumes and Candidates

The Zoho tool features a full fledged database which helps the HR teams to populate resume information from different sources like social sites, mail attachments and more through and integration with ResumeGrabber. Also the search through the database becomes far simpler. Also once the HR decides upon a candidate they can 'lock' him/ her in the system to avoid him being chosen for multiple positions.

The Video below shows how the Zoho Recruit works:

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Create Your Own Digital Flyers with Webdoc

As a Small and Medium business you must have done Email advertising once in your lifetime and obviously you would know how "creating the right creatives" is a major part of actually having a well rounded, engaging and ROI generating Email campaign.

Almost every company which would have previously done either Email advertising or any form of customer engagement factor, would have realized that what really engages the customer is the content and the right content makes all the difference in an effective communication and a communication which just goes in and out, without much of a notice.

Create Digital Flyers in Jiffy Now
With the advent of the digital media now, there are many different pieces of content which a business creates. From YouTube videos to flickr photographs. From facebook LIVE streams to SlideShare presentations. All of this and much more is happening on the web. Now how do you create a dynamic flyer out of all this content and present it to your user?

Webdoc helps you do it quickly and easily!
There is nothing revolutionary about Webdoc, though what it does is powerful and engaging. It gives the users a frame in which they can include and embed any kind of digital content they might have and it can further be shared anywhere on the web.

Its easy to create content on the fly with Webdoc with its simple and easy to use templates.

All that you need to do to use the service is Sign-up for the same, as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you are logged in, you find the following home screen to your profile:

The easy to use Webdoc editor, helps you quickly come up with exciting and interesting digital flyers, as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you are done, all you need to do is to hit the "post" button and your Webdoc is ready to go online. You can host this on your website/ blog and your customers can engage with it online.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Small Business Looking to Expand Outreach? Try facebook Ads

While many Small and Medium businesses are looking at innovative ways of expanding their outreach and engaging the target audience, the essential part still is to manage it all while playing within the restricted marketing budgets. Social Media has made it possible for small businesses now to leverage the power of targeted media buying to reach out to the relevant TG for your business.

Tried facebook advertising yet?
Many businesses are now experimenting with newer ways to increase outreach to the intended target audience and facebook is the increasing choice for most of them. facebook provides a whole new way of targeting the customers very minutely. You can choose across age groups, demographics, geography etc. to ensure that your message is reaching out to the relevant most TG.

This ensures that you spending only the right money to effectively ensure the ROI on your advertising budget. facebook advertising platform is robust and highly cost effective, especially for the SMEs, its easy to work around and gives powerful statistics to ensure that your business can measure each advertising dollar spent.

The volumes?
While facebook reached to about 700 million users globally, there will definitely be users who will be interested in your product/ service and hence you are targeting to an interestingly, socially engaged user base.

The Targeting:
The real power of facebook advertising is not just in its volumes of the user base, but actually in its ability to target highly granularly. facebook ads can reach out to just the potential customer base for your business. Though as many people feel, facebook ads are more B2C in nature and they are more effective that way, there are newer engaging techniques for B2B players.

Your fb ads platform looks like as shown in the screen capture above. You can manage multiple accounts and also manage statistics, showing you the real effectiveness and ROI.

The statistics above show how facebook ads can really be tracked and the numbers marked upon to assess the effectiveness of the Ads.

The menu on the left helps you track your investment on the media buying and also you can any point in time pause your advertising campaign and start it afresh if you think that an updated approach might help you be more effective in engaging your TG.

The fb ads ensure that your targeting is highly defined, which effectively helps you reach out to only the relevant users globally. The targeting can be set as shown in the screen capture above.

There are many other ways of increasing outreach, but for small and emerging businesses facebook Ads are the most effective and highly targeted way of reaching out by buying media. The interesting part here also is, you don't need someone to tell you how to do it, anyone who is using the fb ads for the first time, can quickly configure the platform according to their needs easily.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Manage Your Online Identity with: Google's Me On the Web

Manging your online identity in times today has become essentially crucial. Its all the more important for personal branding for individuals to whom brand really matters. And not just that, even for companies both small and large a managed brand presence online creates a lot of difference in they way they are positioned and perceived in the domain and the business world.

Google wants to help users better understand and manage their online identities, as well as learn how to remove unwanted content from Google search results.

Google: Me on the Web
Google's new offering, me on the web has made it far more easier for people to actually manage their reputation online.

Its fairly simple, with the easy to work around Dashboard which Google has created, almost anyone with a Google account, can track their online mentions, view their public profiles on various social networking sites and blogs, manage their overall digital presence and positioned identity. And not just that, many a times you face an issue of how to remove unwanted items about you. your business from the web. Google's Me on The Web helps you do that too!!

What does me on the web provides?

The Google official blog says: Me on the Web also provides links to resources offering information on how to control what third-party information is posted about you on the web. These include common tips like reaching out to the webmaster of a site to ask for the content to be taken down, or publishing additional information on your own to help make less relevant websites appear farther down in search results. 

How does this help SMEs?
In more ways than one. Obviously now you have a one stop to go to, when it comes to manage everything online about your business's online identity. Also now you have the power to know what it takes to manage third party content written about you online. While you can not just see this content, you also have the power to raise a concern and look at how to remove such content if it's not the manner in which it is to be in.

There are many such online tools available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Optimize Your Web Content With: InboundWriter

Almost every Small and Medium business in times of the internet today is thinking about how to create powerful online content, which ensures that they are visible on search engines. Every business is investing into services such as, Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing to ensure of their visibility online, which obviously has objectives such as business generation related to it.

The challenge:
One of the biggest challenges for SMEs is the fact that not many of them really understand how to create powerful content which will be indexed by search engines and hence rank them over their possible competitors and other players in the market. Many of them have the thought that they are not content creators primarily and hence they are not able to work it out well. So what do they do?

Obviously they can always employ such people who can create such powerful content for them, but with SMEs, managing their finance at all times is also on top of the priority list.

Inbound Writer helps you do it!
An online tool, Inbound writer, helps you optimize your content while you are creating it online.

What does inbound Writer do?

No, it does not automatically create content for you, that is your job. What it does is smartly optimizes your content while you are creating it. InboundWriter indexes the social web in real-time to see what target audiences are reading, sharing and discussing online. It then streams this intelligence into a web-based document editor, providing clear recommendations about the best words and phrases to use to create the most compelling content possible.

Simply speaking, its like the best keyword suggesting tool, which suggests in real time when you are creating textual content, as to what best words you can use to ensure that your intended target audience is able to find you in their search results online.

Understanding your TG

InboundWriter scours all business-generated and user-generated content online - including blogs, product reviews, message boards, the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Amazon, and Technorati, as well as any other websites you'd like, including your competitors – to determine the popularity of the words and phrases directly relevant to the topics you are writing about.

Source: http://www.inboundwriter.com/images/tour_research.gif

Discover the best words to include in your writing to improve your chances of being found on search engines or shared via social media. Based on its own real-time research results, InboundWriter recommends the words and phrases that will increase your content popularity and competitiveness around each specified topic.

http://www.inboundwriter.com/images/tour_keywords.gif

How do I start?
All you need to do is to Sign Up for free with Inbound Writer and you will be re-directed to the following screen:

Once you press the optimize your first document, it asks you to paste the content in the box given. The content must be at least 250 words long. Once you are done keying in the content, you are ready to optimize your content. The platform now asks you to provde at least one website which you think can match upto what you are looking at:

Once you are done, Inbound Writer very interestingly scores your document and helps you with its suggestions to improve the same.

There are many such services available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Create Share and Publish Spreadsheets Online: Spreadsheet LIVE

One major challenge which organizations face today is to share content. As we are constantly creating more and more of it, content requirements for businesses are changing and so is the requirement for tools using which we can share this content with the people/ community, we want it to be shared with.

There is always the most used Email, but it has its own limitations when you see it from an organizational perspective. Sharing large files is a challenge and so is sharing multiple pieces of content. Also it takes much of organization's resources to host such large pieces of content. The concerning factor here is, that organizations today want to not just share content, but have its employees comment upon it, make it sharable and ensure that more an more of collaboration happens around content.

Online Content Sharing: The Solution
There are several online content sharing tools available which help businesses address the challenge of content sharing. In general these content sharing sites make it easy for you to not just share small data, but also help you share large files across multiple participants at the same point of time and hence ensure collaboration.

How do these tools work?
The general process of working of these tools is that you upload the content which you want to share with the the intended target audience, eg: a spread sheet created by you can be uploaded on using the tool and a hyperlink is automatically E-mailed to each intended user who can view the document and if given the rights, can also edit the document.

For Small and Medium Businesses: Spreadsheets are Crucial
From business continuity plans to number crunching in terms of revenue, SMEs use Spreadsheets almost everytime. When it comes to sharing these Spreadsheet to invite collaborators, the challenge is to find a tool which is not Email.

Spreadsheets LIVE helps you achieve this. The screen capture below shows the glimpse:

Spreadsheets LIVE features:

• Create spreadsheets from scratch using only a web browser
• Share your spreadsheets with other users online
• Collaborate with others in editing your spreadsheets in real time
• Control access to your spreadsheet

SpreadsheetLIVE offers a fully featured spreadsheet application environment within your web browser. You can create spreadsheets from scratch and access them anywhere globally with just an Internet connection. You can easily share your spreadsheets over the Internet and collaborate in real time with other users.

How do I Create a Spreadsheet Online?
All you need to do is sign-up for a free account online by clicking on the "sign-up for free" spreadsheet link. Once done, you will be re-directed to the sign-up page:

Once you are logged into your account using your Username and Password, you will be re-directed to the following screen:

To quickly create your first workbook, all you need to do is to click on "create a workbook" link on the left sidebar of the screen and you will land into an online environment which is similar to what you would have seen while working on Microsoft Excel, as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you are done with the spreadsheet, you are ready to now share it with the intended audience.

As an SME obviously Spreadsheets LIVE helps you save time and cost of creating content and working on it in a collaborative environment.

There are many such services available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

How to Keep Updated With All the News of Your Domain: Linkedin Today

The advent of the Internet has changed one dynamic starkingly for businesses and individuals and that is access to information. With internet now being available across devices, both mobile and laptops, people have the ability to keep abreast of everything which is happening around them. You no more require just news channels to know the latest news, all that you need to do is log-onto the internet and you are good!

There is a such a lot of information, how to access it in a focused manner?
There is a whole lot of information on the internet, how do you ensure that you don't waste time and that you reach out to only the content pieces which are relevant to you?! There are many ways to do it, obviously one is that you can always subscribe to all the quality blogs out there online, which are relevant to your domain and keep reading them daily. Its like reading many newspapers to keep yourself updated with all the happenings. But is it scalable, probably not!

Access relevant global information as you login to Linkedin!

The screen capture above shows (the red arrow) a new feature of Linkedin called : Linkedin Today, which actually is like your real world newspaper, just that here you access it online and not read it page by page.

What is Linkedin today?

Linkedin today is a platform which aggregates content from the top sources of the world on various domains. The various industries it covers is:

• Automotive
• Banking
• Computer Games
• Computer Software
• Construction
• Design
• Education Management
• Entertainment
• Fashion & Apparel
• Film & Motion Pictures
• Financial Services
• Food & Beverage
• Graphic Design
• Health, Wellness & Fitness
• Higher Education
• Hospital & Health Care
• Hospitality
• IT
• Insurance
• Internet
• Law
• Leisure & Travel
• Management Consulting
• Marketing & Advertising
• Nonprofit
• Oil & Energy
• Online Media
• Pharmaceuticals
• Public Relations
• Publishing
• Real Estate
• Restaurants
• Retail
• Semiconductors
• Staffing & Recruiting
• Telecommunications
• Venture Capital & Private Equity

The above screen capture shows how the Linkedin Today looks like and how can you easily follow/ un-follow a certain source and an industry.

Is it free?

YES! all the information provided by the platform is free for your use and consumption. You can access it anytime on your mobile phones, or laptop, anywhere across the world and be updated with the latest globally.

How does it help my business?

As an emerging company, you are always looking out for opportunities and opportunities don't come wrapped in silver platters. They are to be found. Access to real time news obviously helps in ensuring that you keep track of everything happening in your industry and hence create new opportunities for your emerging business.

There are many such services available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Reaching Out to Customers Through a Multi Media Mix: Homeshop18

A couple of years back, when social networking was not prevalent and while there was not much buying online at least in the emerging parts of the world, the real source of marketing for people was the offline media, in the form of newspapers, magazines and businesses which had higher budgets could explore the options of leveraging television as a powerful engaging medium.

The Marketing Challenge for SMEs
For a fairly widespread section of SMEs, marketing is a major challenge. Most of the Small and Medium Enterprises are not positioned well to have dedicated marketing teams and to further it not enough budgets earmarked for reaching out to the target audience. What SMEs require are innovative ways to reach out to the audience and in a cost effective manner.

Learn from Homeshop18
What you can do is learn from Homeshop18.com. Though Homeshop18 is not an SME, its a venture of a much larger business entity, but what SMEs can learn from it is how to leverage the various marketing channels available to the best of their capability and increase sales.

While the above screen capture shows the online portal where customers can come online and buy from Homeshop18, it has a fair outreach to a wide audience through television, which might not be present online.

The video above shows how Homeshop18 reaches out to a wide audience through television as an outreach medium.

How Can SMEs Benefit?

Small and Medium enterprises which are exploring to reach out to their target audience through these mediums but might not have the right budgets, can partner with Homeshop18, via their Partner program, which allows parties, which are interested in reaching out to target audience through various media supported by Homeshop18.

You can also click the following URL if you wish to know more about their partner program and how you could increase sales by partnering with Homeshop18: http://www.homeshop18.com/partner-with-us.html

There are many such services available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Help Your Customers Take Intelligent & Informed Buying Decisions: naaptol.com

Introduction of the internet has changed everything. How businesses communicate and today transact has evolved from being just a one sided conversation to a multi way dialogue which has empowered customers to be well informed of what they are buying. Today if you are going to buy any product you probably have the reviews of the same available online already.

E-commerce helped it all evolve
E-commerce thought is still catching up in India, but with broadband spreading across the country, there is a lot being achieved with people actually making purchase decisions online. There are many e-commerce portals which are empowering the customer with all sorts of information, which is helping them make powerful buying decisions. While it becomes easier for both the customer and the seller to transact online, its also scalable, as, if you are a seller you can simply host your product/ solution/ offering online on an e-commerce platform and the rest is taken care of by the platform. Your product can reach out to target audience which generally you would not have reached out to.

Comparing the products before buying helps: naaptol!
If you are able to compare the product you want to buy with similar offerings in the market OR comparative brands, you are better able to judge, if you are making the best choice or not.

While there are exciting deals on this platform, the interesting part for Small and Medium Enterprises is that they can sell their products on the website, while listing them with their features for the buyers/ customers to have a look at and explore.

As shown in the screen capture above, naaptol allows users to be a seller or a buyer. As a seller you can list your products on the site and be assured that many prospective buyers would be comparing them online. 

How do I list my product?

To create your own e-store on naaptol, all that you need to do, is to create a login to the website, as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you are done, you can start listing your products online with all the various details about them, which you think, the customers would want to know and will help them take a buy decision.

How can customers choose brand and products?

Lets take an example. Lets say you want to buy a hands free for your mobile phone, all you need to do for it to navigate across to the hands free section under mobiles on the website and you will be re-directed to the following screen:

The customers can now choose amongst the various brands existing and can also get a comparative differentiator chart created for the choices they have made. These differences are not just limited to prices, but also features and many other comparison pointers, which are provided by the platform and help customers make an informed buy decision.

How do SMEs benefit?

SMEs which are in the product selling space can actually list their products for free on these e-commerce websites and generate sales. The process pretty much remains similar as it is in the offline world. As you buy from trusted brands and shops/ establishments, you obviously have to create your reputation and credibility in the online marketplace, where your customers have to believe you and place their trust on you monetarily.

Selling online reduces down the cost of sales and also reduces down the sales cycle time and customer acquisition process. Hence for SMEs its more scalable and a far better option to sell online.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

Get Noticed and Generate Business at Trade Shows Globally: Trade Show

Every entrepreneur OR a businessman, knows the importance and power of networking. They all understand how crucial is it for them to reach out to the world, while obviously increasing visibility but with a goal to generate business leads through powerful networking.

While there are new modes of communication now, with the internet playing a major role in radically changing the way we communicate with each other and also powerfully establishing a new way in which businesses communicate with its customers. Still what remains a very powerful mode of communication is a face to face/ physical meeting.

The Challenge: so many events, how do we keep track?
One of the biggest challenges faced by companies, is to keep track of so many events and especially the trade shows that happen. There are many of them and they are happening globally, but keeping a track of the same is a challenge. Bigger companies have their respective marketing teams to track events and ensure participation, but in Small and Medium Enterprises, especially the start-ups and mid-size companies, the challenge is to keep abreast of the information.

B2B Exchanges Give you the Information
Lets take an example and show how you can be abreast of all the various trade shows and participate in them. One of the leading B2B exchanges of the country being IndiaMART provides you all the information about these trade shows for free.

How do I get to this information?
All that you need to do is go to the URL: www.indiamart.com where you will find the link "Trade Shows" in the top menu navigation.

Click on the link and you will be re-directed to a page which looks like the following:

The website has exhaustive information about trade shows happening all over the globe and not just in India. You can view the various trade shows by the origin country by clicking on the "By Country" OR "By City" link on the right sidebar of the website.

How do I visit these trade shows?

Once you have the information about the show and once you choose the one's which suit your business needs, all you have to do is just click on its link and you will get all the information about the show and you can register for the same by going on their website. Example as shown in the screen capture below:

So take your business global by visiting global trade shows. Foster and maintain new global partnerships and relationships.

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!

The Most Advanced Open Source ERP and CRM Tool: OpenTaps

What is Opentaps?

Opentaps is the most advanced open source ERP+CRM solution. Opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM is a fully integrated application suite that brings together top-tier open source projects to help you manage your business more effectively.  Today, opentaps supports ecommerce, Customer Relationship Management, Warehouse and Inventory Management, Supply Chain Management, and Financial Management to Business Intelligence and mobility integration out-of-the-box.

Opentaps: free Software

Opentaps is a free ERP+CRM tool. Being open source, its source code is freely available to be modified/ built upon. It's also "free" as in "free lunch," so you can freely download and use a production-ready, enterprise-grade ERP system.  If you are technically knowledgeable or have unique needs not covered by our expertise, this is probably your best option.

Obviously if you are not really technically oriented and are a business view person, you can always have a technology team to architect a powerful fully customized open source ERP+CRM tool for your business. Any ERP or CRM application must ensure that it meets the various business objectives which are related to the business and for which the application is being created for.

Who all are using Opentaps?

There are many organisations which have been using Opentaps, the most of the industries include:

• Industrial machinery manufacturers
• Online goods retailers
• Online content distributors
• Telecommunications companies
• Independent software vendors
• Hosted service providers

What features does opentaps provide?

• As a fully integrated ERP and CRM suite, handling everything from leads, order management, and customer service to purchasing, production planning, inventory management, and manufacturing, to shipping and accounting.
• As a specialized production and purchasing planning and scenario analysis tool
• As a CRM tool for sales force and customer service automation
• As an inventory, order, and accounting back end application for PHP front end stores
• As an ecommerce platform supporting multiple online stores with special offers, promotions, and gift certificates
• As a specialized vertical industry billing solution
• As a hosted ecommerce product offering

Source: http://www.opentaps.org/sites/default/files/images/OrderFulfillment.jpg

The CRM dashboard of the system looks like the following:

Source: http://www.opentaps.org/sites/default/files/images/CRM_Dashboard.preview.png

The financial Dashboard looks like the following:

Source: http://www.opentaps.org/sites/default/files/images/Financials_Dashboard.preview.png

Is there a services support for Opentaps?

Yes, being open source and the code being free and the software essentially being free for a download, Opentaps has a strong services-support system. Being open source the biggest advantage is the community driven support. Users create new used cases and include them online for everyone's benefit.

Opentaps has the following different versions:

• Update Service
• Professional Edition
• Professional Evaluation
• Professional Implementation
• Training
• opentaps In The Cloud

You can also access the services an support by directly navigating to the following URL: http://www.opentaps.org/services-support

How do I get Opentaps for my business?

You can get in touch with any of the following Opentaps partners who will help you in customizing and implementing Opentaps for your business. These partners are business associates for opentaps who understand your business and act as direct opentaps vendors to you. They also extend personal service and support for your business.

All you need to reach out to these partners is to follow the following URL: http://www.opentaps.org/partners

Where can I learn more about opentaps before taking a business call?

While you can always get in touch with a partner, you can also get to know more about opentaps with the opentaps shop which is available through this URL: http://shop.opentaps.org/ 

There are many such online platforms available, which are benefiting the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. To know more, get in touch with the experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services. Do drop in a comment to this post to let us know what else would you want us to share about!