voice

Everyone is not born with everything what they need but we are born with an mind that we can achieve more than what we need!

Lakhwinder Singh

In this era of digital technology the mode of communication for the business has became very easy, due the internet, marketing has became lucrative, like e-marketing has given opportunities to the business to communicate with customer directly, like marketing on mobile, email marketing and many more way of digital marketing. And businesses are slowly moving toward the digital era. So does the movement of the business toward the digital era will affect the PR industry? But in this competition of online communication PR industry is no behind, the launch of Public relation online (PRO) is designed to educate the PR industry about the technologies and techniques needed to respond to the challenges of online communications.  Public relations online (PRO) is a non-profit organisation established for individuals and companies who are passionate about the extraordinary opportunity presented by Online PR. It is a place to share information, debate issues and exchange new ideas, methodologies and theories.

The aim is to increase knowledge and explore best practice in online public relations: Creating an online and offline resource in which members and contributors can discuss, challenge and establish online PR strategies and practices. Now the question is that, does public relation online (PRO) will proof effective in this growing technology of online communication or does it will make its on place in this digital era?

(Source: http://www.pr9.net/business/marketing/2870november.html)

Lakhwinder Singh

In todays life we are using so many sites like social media , social networking sites but how many of us know what web 2.0 and how it is important for the grow of new technology, the term web2.0 can be  described as the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web. According to Tim O’Reilly: Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. (Source: wikipedia)

Electronic marketing (E-marketing) can be explained as a modern business practice related with buying and selling goods, services, information and different views or ideas via the Internet and other electronic means. As an example of e-marketing we can take example of e-mail marketing, SNS’s like Face book, My space which are very famous in this era.
But the research shows that use of this modern technology of marketing in large scale is only large firms not by the small and medium size companies, but I believe SME’s are more important to the economic growth.
Forth. et al. (2004) findings for small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s) illustrate that 99% of the private firms in UK are small and medium size and these SME’s are known for the major contribution to the economic development and employment growth.
And the further research by Mullins (2007) shows that even though internet marketing is so effective and beneficial for marketing purpose there is lack of anticipation by small and medium enterprises in e-business which is rising concern to UK government and service provider, as SME’s plays important in contribution to UK economy (Mullins R et al. 2007).
So all the different research done by the many researchers shows that there is something wrong that small and medium business is not participating in the use of e-marketing. If e-marketing is so effective and contemptible than why it is not so popular. Is e-marketing too expensive than ordinary marketing? Is their a lack of knowledge about e-marking by SME’s? Or Is e-marketing too new to test?

Lakhwinder Singh

Although exceptions exist, the available research suggests that most SNSs primarily support pre-existing social relations. Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe (2007) suggest that Facebook is used to maintain existing offline relationships or solidify offline connections, as opposed to meeting new people. These relationships may be weak ties, but typically there is some common offline element among individuals who friend one another, such as a shared class at school. This is one of the chief dimensions that differentiate SNSs from earlier forms of public CMC such as newsgroups (Ellison et al., 2007). Research in this vein has investigated how online interactions interface with offline ones. For instance, Lampe, Ellison, and Steinfield (2006) found that Facebook users engage in “searching” for people with whom they have an offline connection more than they “browse” for complete strangers to meet. Likewise, Pew research found that 91% of U.S. teens who use SNSs do so to connect with friends (Lenhart & Madden, 2007).
SNSs enable individuals to connect with one another, it is not surprising that they have become deeply embedded in user’s lives. In Korea, Cyworld has become an integral part of everyday life—Choi (2006) found that 85% of that study’s respondents “listed the maintenance and reinforcement of pre-existing social networks as their main motive for Cyworld use” (p. 181). Likewise, boyd (2008) argues that MySpace and Facebook enable U.S. youth to socialize with their friends even when they are unable to gather in unmediated situations; she argues that SNSs are “networked publics” that support sociability, just as unmediated public spaces do. So the research from all theses authors shows how popular is SNSs becoming and these SNSs had made the people’s crazy.

Social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists. Each of these features existed in some form before SixDegrees, of course. Profiles existed on most major dating sites and many community sites. AIM and ICQ buddy lists supported lists of Friends, although those Friends were not visible to others. Classmates.com allowed people to affiliate with their high school or college and surf the network for others who were also affiliated, but users could not create profiles or list Friends until years later. SixDegrees was the first to combine these features.
SixDegrees promoted itself as a tool to help people connect with and send messages to others. While SixDegrees attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the service closed. Looking back, its founder believes that SixDegrees was simply ahead of its time (A. Weinreich, personal communication, July 11, 2007). While people were already flocking to the Internet, most did not have extended networks of friends who were online. Early adopters complained that there was little to do after accepting Friend requests, and most users were not interested in meeting strangers.
From 1997 to 2001, a number of community tools began supporting various combinations of profiles and publicly articulated Friends. AsianAvenue, BlackPlanet, and MiGente allowed users to create personal, professional, and dating profiles—users could identify Friends on their personal profiles without seeking approval for those connections (O. Wasow, personal communication, August 16, 2007). Likewise, shortly after its launch in 1999, LiveJournal listed one-directional connections on user pages. LiveJournal’s creator suspects that he fashioned these Friends after instant messaging buddy lists (B. Fitzpatrick, personal communication, June 15, 2007)—on LiveJournal, people mark others as Friends to follow their journals and manage privacy settings. The Korean virtual worlds site Cyworld was started in 1999 and added SNS features in 2001, independent of these other sites (see Kim & Yun, this issue). Likewise, when the Swedish web community LunarStorm refashioned itself as an SNS in 2000, it contained Friends lists, guestbooks, and diary pages (D. Skog, personal communication, September 24, 2007).
The next wave of SNSs began when Ryze.com was launched in 2001 to help people leverage their business networks. In particular, the people behind Ryze, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, and Friendster were tightly entwined personally and professionally. They believed that they could support each other without competing (Festa, 2003). In the end, Ryze never acquired mass popularity, Tribe.net grew to attract a passionate niche user base, LinkedIn became a powerful business service, and Friendster became popular among youngsters.
And now in these days the SNS’s such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. As of these hundreds of SNSs, with various technological affordances, supporting a wide range of interests and practices.

Every branch of media relations is online today. The future will be more so. Marketing communications, crisis communications, brand communications, reputational communications, financial communications, industry relations all arelargely conducted online, principally through e-mail, web sites and conferencing. Increasingly, activities will include blogging and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) in which telephoning is done by internet. CD-ROM press kits have already largely disappeared in favor of Adobe pdfs, and press releases will become both multimedia and interactive in order to gain attention for online information and to build rapport with reporters who will be increasingly isolated behind barrages of information. The future will not be one of too little information but of far too much and the challenge for media relations practitioners will be to generate content that is of interest to reporters then to make sure they consider it. There will be as much or more emphasis on story lines and stunts to gain attention, and personal relationships with reporters will be more important than ever. The idea that one can work facelessly with the media has always been less than perfect and will be more difficult in an era when thousands of e-mails hit in-boxes daily. In fact, there has been some movement already to go back to old-fashioned reporter schmoozing in order to overcome the barrier of too much information and too many contacts. Personal relationships, however, will not overcome the need for content in the self-interested relationship that exists between media relations practitioners and reporters. Reporters will continue to favor media relations practitioners who help the reporters do their jobs, bring them good story ideas and keep them on deadline as mutable as deadlines will be. One important change is that media relations is no longer local. It is global, One must assume that whatever is written or published can be seen anywhere in the world by anyone – and will be. Therefore, there is no future in attempting to isolate news. Added to the burden of media relations across all disciplines are the threat of online anti-campaigns, such as boycotts, that try to involve legitimate media in reporting them in order to scar the reputation and credibility of companies. With globalism, these campaigns can come from anywhere at any time – and will.

While doing some online research one thing strikes me, on the very first page of Google most of the links come are blogs, if searching engine is giving preference to these blogs rather than a business websites it can be very useful for business, and after doing a bit of research a come to know how beneficial is the business blogging for business.

Blogs encourage feedback and deepen customer relationships
A weblog is basically on online diary. Entries don’t have to be official and can be any length you want. Diaries are appealing to readers as they are both candid and revealing.
By maintaining a blog, a business can have a no-hassle one-to-one conversation with its customers whenever it feels like it. Customers are also able to ‘post’ their opinions in response to a blog entry, building a sense of community.
Blogs rank higher in search engine results
From an SEO perspective, blog posts are generally ranked higher by Google and other search engines than static web pages. This is because blog content is normally updated more frequently and often contains links to relevant resources.
Blogs demonstrate expertise
A blog gives a small business the opportunity to demonstrate its expertise in a given area. It’s also a forum to listen to feedback. I know that I am much more likely to do business with someone and be loyal to a brand that I think is listening to me. How about you?
Easy Web Publishing Solution: Blog software is easy to use. Simply write your thoughts, link to resources, and publish to your blog, all at the push of a few buttons. Blog software companies such as TypePad or Blogger.com offer easy blogging tools to get started. Updating the weblog is a faster process than contacting a web designer with changes or doing the coding and uploading yourself.
Lower Costs: Blogging is a low-cost alternative to having a web presence. For small business owners without the time to learn web html or the money to hire a designer/developer, blogging offers an inexpensive method to get your company’s name out on the Internet.

While searching on any major search engine, one finds hundreds of thousands of websites. Normally, people visit first 30 websites or we can say first page listed by searching engine. Thus your website should be among the first 30 websites or on the first page. For that your site should avail higher positioning (ranking) in Search Engines and for that you need to optimize your website properly.

Search Engine Positioning has become tremendously popular because of the effectiveness of search engine marketing in the recent years. Web site promotion through Internet search engines has very high impact than the regular banner advertising and other online advertising idea.

Google is undoubtedly the world’s best crawler based search engine and has been acclaimed for its ranking procedures and policies. Most of the search engines use different evaluating aspects while indexing a new site.

Google uses method of Page Rank to determine a page’s relevance or importance. Page Rank can improve your search engine ranking by 60%. It increases the brand, importance and popularity of your website.

As a rule it takes about two weeks for Google or other search engines to index the new version of your web site after it has been optimized and submitted. The sooner you start your web site optimization, the faster you will see the initial results.

The PR industry is one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic in the marketing and media world. Philip Dewhurst, UK chief executive of Shandwick International, gives a beginner’s guide to the business of PR, what it does and how it works Public relations is one of the fastest-growing professions in the UK.

According to some estimates, the rate of growth for PR jobs has been higher than of any other management function over the last 15 years. A 1994 government survey found there were 48,000 PR professionals in the UK, working in PR consultancies with a combined earning power of £300m and a turnover of £1bn. The Institute of Public Relations estimates that the industry has grown 15% since then. In 1999, the combined income of the top 150 agencies was £436m. The US business is thriving too. At the last count it employed more than 110,000 people. The top 100 US firms earn more than £2.5bn between them, and their income grew by nearly 30% between 1998 and 1999. Interpublic Group of Companies, which owns advertising and direct marketing businesses, as well as PR agencies — PR has grown from representing a quarter of the business five years ago to half of all income today. The UK industry is the most developed in Europe. This is partly a reflection of the strength of the country’s media, which is powerful, competitive and independent, but also because the UK has traditionally been used as a launch pad by US PR networks looking to expand into Europe. With the exception of Shandwick, almost all of the world’s big international networks were founded in the US, where public relations were recognized as a distinct practice and profession as early as the Twenties. By the mid-Sixties, the largest US agencies, Burson-Marsteller and Hill & Knowlton, had offices in London. The evolution of their international networks in Europe, the Middle East and Asia was made possible by the expansion of American multinationals such as Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, who wanted their PR and advertising advisers to follow them into new markets.
There are hundreds of PR agencies in the UK, but most of the big networks are owned by a larger communications services group, like Interpublic which owns another major PR brand in The Weber Group, as well as one of the world’s largest advertising agencies McCann-Erickson Worldwide.
Groups like Interpublic also tend to own brand identity and web design agencies, market research and event management companies and direct marketing agencies as well. Only one of the top 10 PR agencies in the UK is not owned by one of the eight communications services groups which dominate advertising and PR in the UK. Groups like Interpublic are keen to invest in PR agencies because, although advertising is still a growth industry, PR is growing faster.