Sociable

If you want to install just one social media plugin on your WordPress blog then be it Sociable. It is highly customizable, and has built-in support for all the major social media sites. Once the plugin is installed you can enable as many social bookmarking buttons as you want to. You do not need to enable all the buttons, as it will clutter the space. You can even rearrange the icons to suit your specific need.

Tweet This

Do I need to say what it does, or the importance of the thing it does? Twitter is a magical word on the Internet, it has redefined the way we share, communicate, and even search. You would want to use. Tweet This plugin to seed your blog posts in this media. Tweet This usage an URL shortening service (Bit.ly) to make the URL of your blog fit the 140-character specification set by twitter.

Social Homes

As the name suggests, Social Homes helps you tell the visitors of your blog about all the online places you call home. You can add links to all your profiles in the sidebar of your blog using this plugin. Setting up this plugin is quite easy. All you need to do is add URL and the name of the website to set this up. The plugin will fetch icons of each of the URLs you entered and display it in your sidebar.

None of the above is optional plugin. You need to use all of the above, if you want to make your presence felt in the social circle.

In total 80% global marketers either use or are planning to use social media. (See image for details).

This study also found that 58% of US and Canadian marketers use social media to promote their stuffs, while, just 34% of their European counterpart use it. But this figure will likely change this year as 30% European marketers shown their interest in using this year compared to 18% of North American marketers who showed inclination towards using social media in 2010. (See image for detail).

1. Employees no longer wish to use their personal mail IDs for your work because of the frequent job changes and privacy.
2. A mail sent from salesXYZ@gmail.com does not look as professional as a mail sent from sales@xyz.com.

Therefore, you must have a professional e-mail ID and for that you do not need to invest thousands of dollars in installing e-mail server. You can get everything by just buying an unlimited e-mail hosting account. You would not like to have an account that limits you and ask for more money as soon as number of users grows. You need to look for the following three things when deciding on an E-mail Hosing account.

Is it truly unlimited?

This is quite a valid question to ask. You will not want to buy a hosting account that charges for every new user. Ask if the e-mail hosting account you are considering offers: unlimited Email Accounts with at least 1GB per mail box. Does it support mailing list should you decide for sending mass mail to all your customers.

Is it safe?

Does the e-mail hosting account you are considering provide virus protection? Does it have Spam Protection? Do you have DNS control? These are the questions you need to ask while finalizing your e-mail hosting account.

What features does it have?

Online address book, folder management, SMTP/POP3 and IMAP as well as webmail access, sorting and searching, vacation auto responder, etc. are some of the features you need to have in your e-mail hosting account.

And on top of that ask yourself whether it is in your budget or not.

Note: You may want to check Gossimer’s Ultimate Email Plan that offers lots of feature and charge you just $1 per month for unlimited e-mail accounts. In fact, it has all the features we discussed above. Check it out the Ultimate Email Plan!

So, what is the answer…?

Is it the search volume? Or is it competition volume? Better still, is it the nature of keywords? Or is it the intent behind the keyword search? Or is it the title competition? Or what?

Whew! Too many to juggle with….

Well, do not waste your time on thinking hard in the solitary corner of your messed-up room (messed up room is common with all the webmasters, do not get sold for the sleek, and well-arranged rooms that you see in the A-listers videos; they are done on a purpose) because the answer to the above question is none of the above.

All of these things are important, very important, but nothing is half as important as important for a successful keyword research as is the common sense. You knew the answer? Hey, Einstein, why didn’t you tell me so? J

Now, let’s get serious.

Keyword research is a process of funneling down the information searched by the customers in your niche so that you can come up with terms that are searched by the many users and have fewer competitors.

The definition is sweet and sleek. Take a note of it. But, keep in mind that this definition rests on two variables: information entered by your customers and process of filtering down.

To get what?

To find the right keyword for your website or campaign, and in both the cases you will need to use your common sense. It is your common sense that will tell you how much a keyword is valuable. For example, let’s say you have optimized your website for “beach hotels” seeing its volume and competition, and despite everything being just right you are not getting any traffic, at least not substantial. Why?

Because you may have been suggested by your keyword tools that “beach hotels” is the most searched term in your niche, but it didn’t say that no one searched for “beach hotels”. Rather people searches for terms like “Miami beach hotels”, “OC beach hotels” “beach hotels in Florida”, etc., as “beach hotels” is a local keyword. And people search this keyword as a compound keyword along with some city, county, or state’s name.

This is all common sense. Take it out of equation, and you end up getting no traffic, regardless of your ranking.

Say again, which is the most important factor in keyword research?

Well done! You got it right this time.

The industry in the month studied has not changed very much. Google saw a growth of 0.1%, Yahoo! fell by 0.2%, Ask network saw 0.1% decline, and there was no change in AOL LLC network’s usage. It has also kept the leaderboard as it was in the previous months. At number one is Google with 65.5% market share, at number two is Yahoo! with 16.8% market share, and number 3 spot is taken by Bing, which has 11.5% market share. (see image for details)

Seeing the sluggishness in the market, it is not apt to say that Bing has stagnated. The search volume of coming months will show us the real picture, until then let’s assume Bing is still binging.

]]> http://blog.gossimer.com/is-the-honeymoon-over-for-bing/feed/ 0 http://blog.gossimer.com/choose-a-killer-wordpress-theme-in-3-easy-steps/ http://blog.gossimer.com/choose-a-killer-wordpress-theme-in-3-easy-steps/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:30:09 +0000 bikram http://blog.gossimer.com/choose-a-killer-wordpress-theme-in-3-easy-steps/ A theme sets tone of your blog. It conveys a message to the visitors. You need to be extra-careful when deciding on a theme for your WordPress blog. Having said that I must add that choosing a theme for your WordPress blog is not a rocket science; rather it is a 3-step process, which I am going to describe below.

Know your niche

You guessed it right. The process of choosing a blog theme begins with determining the niche you want to serve because a theme that works in one niche does not necessarily will work in another niche. A dog training blog should not use a theme made for web hosting or casinos.

How compatible it is?

Ask this question every time you run into a theme that makes your jaw drop — well, there is a slight exaggeration there. But, not in terms of browser compatibility because no matter how great the theme look on your browser, if it is not going to look the same on all major browser then it ain’t the theme you are looking for. After all how good is a theme that your audience cannot see?

Kiss baby

Before you go ahead to smooch your whatever, let me tell you this: I was talking about keeping it simple stupid. Do not go for a theme that is too complex, or too-layered. Simplicity still sells and sells like a magic. The goal of a blog design is to provide an ambience for the content to be red. Its goal is to make the content stand out, not to stand itself on its seat and shout will all its might—Look how beautiful I am, ain’t I!

You do not need any self-conceit theme. Go for the one that is sleek, sweet, and simple— well you can add sexy in the list, if you please.

Also check the terms of use before making any modification to the theme. It would be nice if you stick to the terms of use set by the designer.

What your audience what?

Do not just write what you feel is right because the chances are quite fair that most of the time it is not right. You need to ask your audience what they need. You can take help of occasional surveys, or visit forums in your niche or read other blogs in your niche to understand your audience’s need. This is very important.

What tone do they like?

Not only what you write is important, but how you write is equally important. You should not use just any tone of voice, rather you should ask your audience how they want to be communicated. Some people need authority-like guidance, while other wants to read blogs that treat them equal, while other wants to feel superior. Use the tone your audience wants you to use.

When do they want to hear it?

Timing is equally important. If everyone in your niche is publishing its article at 10 AM then there is a good reason to that. May be it’s the audience who want that! You should research in this as well. Observe when you see spikes in viewership. And also ask your audience if they want you to post daily, or posting on alternate day will do? Should you write on weekends?

These are the decisions you need to make, and these along with creative use of words and sentences will make your blog interesting to read.

The gender difference in the use of mobile for social networking was quite apparent, but when the data was rearranged to get age-wise usage of mobile social networking, it was found that people men and women in the age brackets 25 to 34 and 35 to 54 were more active than youth in early 20s, teenagers, or tweenagers. This was against what common sense suggests us. 36% people in 35 to 54 age bracket engage in mobile social networking, whereas, 34% of people between age 25 and 34 use their mobile for social networking, but only 16% people between 18-24 use their mobile for social networking. See image for complete data.

We request you to create a support request or call us on our 24×7 phone lines in case you need to reach us. Our representatives will respond as quickly as possible.

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Our support team will not be available on chat from 12:30pm GMT to 3:30pm GMT on 5th March, 2010 due to some unscheduled maintenance being carried out on our Chat Servers. You can raise a support ticket in case you are facing issues or call us on our 24×7 phone support.

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