Innovative e-marketing professionals are using these social media outlets to create brand awareness as an indirect platform to influence their sales. Humorous, controversial, newsworthy or simply informative content created by companies got exceptional appreciation in these social community groups. This year we saw a lot of companies posting corporate videos on Youtube or creating their branded channels and fan pages on Facebook. In the years to come, social media marketing will make more strides and e-marketers will have to be more creative in how they approach the social media scene. Direct advertising and promotion hasn’t found much ground in these social communities where people simply come to network, share, and enjoy.

What does this mean to you as a marketer or brand manager? Well more hard work. You need to find a voice, a personality, and the power of belonging around your brand. Whether you like it or not, people are talking about your brand and their friends and their friends are reading about it.

A bad experience, an angry customer is all you need these days to completely ruin your brand’s reputation. In such a scenario, what you need is to use this social media to create an honest connection with your target market. Listen, reply and find creative ways to interact, so that your brand finds it’s power of belonging.

In a recent interview to elan magazine, the marketing guru of the east, Said Baaghil had to say a lot about this power of belonging concept. If you want to read more, I recommend you to purchase, The Power of Belonging, a book he wrote on this very subject.

With ease and comfort, he explains how brand are not about eye catchy logos and colors. It’s more and beyond that.

1. Can you acquire the .com extension of the domain?
2. Is it short and simple?
3. Is it easy to spell and read?
4. Is it easy to recognize and remember?
5. Is it easy to pronounce?
6. Is it pronounced in only one way?
7. Is it pronounced in all languages (for international markets)?
8. Is it Suggestive of product benefits?
9. Is it always timely?
10. Is it legally available for use?

I am biased, but I highly recommend you all to attend the seminar. I promise you will be pleased with what you learn. I will be posting more on this. Till then, click to see the full version of this event email shot.

Interactive Digital Media Advertising is growing at more than 80% every
year for the past 3 years in Pakistan², this was stated by Adil Ahmed, COO -
The Symmetry and Director Octave. He was addressing an international
conference on Digital Marketing which was recently organized by Terrabiz in
Karachi. Adil covered key aspects of the shift from a traditional media to
digital media, internet usage trends and expected growth, active advertisers
and their growing demands, case Studies of some of the most successful
Online Campaigns; and why & how digital advertising is more measurable than
other traditional mediums.

Chris Schaumann, Global Advertising & Digital Lead – APAC/Greater, China
Region Microsoft, Naeem Y. Zamindar, Vice President & Head of Broadband,
Business Division Mobilink, Khurram Hamid Global Head, Mobile Marketing
Innovation, Procter & Gamble, UAE Joao Cabral, Online Sales and Operations
Manager, South East Asia Google Inc., Dr. Irfan Ahmad Director, Yahoo!
Middle East and others also spoke at the occasion.

Chris Schaumann of Microsoft stepped up to talk about the ³Digital
Advertising Trends.² The segment highlighted trends and measurements of
consumers who are in control and ignore standard advertising. They spend
most of their time online and the online populations in Asia are exploding.
Advertisers are trying to keep up and struggling with finding the right way
to reach and engage them in a meaningful manner.

Naeem Y. Zamindar of Mobilink discussed ³How the coming broadband revolution
will enable a socio – economic revolution in Pakistan?² He informed the
participants that Mobilink Infinity, the broadband division, will grow to
$300M opportunity by 2012.

Khurram Hamid, Global Head, Mobile Marketing Innovation, Procter & Gamble,
from UAE resumed the session with an intriguing segment on ³How do we Talk
to our Next Billion Consumers?² Khurram guided the audience with techniques
on developing the markets biggest opportunities for mobile users to reach
and help low-income consumers to develop the correct strategic value chain
to win in mobile marketing.

Yasir Riaz Director Brand & Strategic Planning, Geo TV presented an overview
of internet and digital/mobile platforms and spoke about how the consumers
are reacting to new technologies, the challenges in the field and how new
media can be adapted to and used to make digital a viable and an effective
channel.

Amer Sarfraz, Internet Marketing Specialist from Bramerz (Pvt) Ltd addressed
the topic on ³Harnessing the power of E-mail Marketing.² This covered
creating effective mailing lists, optimizing e-mail deliverability,
overcoming all technological barriers for efficient e-mail marketing,
measuring the success of your e-mail marketing campaign and standing out of
the Œnoise¹.

Post lunch, Joao Cabral, Online Sales and Operations Manager, South East
Asia, spoke about ³Google Inc. AdWords and the Future of Online
Advertising.² This session dealt with how AdWords benefit businesses by
providing a measurable and cost effective solution and help marketers and
brands to reach out to a targeted audience. Joao also spoke on the use of
image, video and other
gadgets in online marketing activities; also discussed Google Analytics, the
new web tracking tool.

Rabia Garib Editor-in Chief, CIO Pakistan gave the event a turn with the
applicative side of Marketing 2.0¹s learning with ³Making 2.0 Work for You.²
This theme stated that everyone has a website but few have the necessary web
presence needed to create a platform that attracts the intended audience in
one place. The speaker talked about how you create content, effectively use
and converge the different media for the idea and keep the development cycle
sustainable in the long run.

Sabeen Mahmud, COO b.i.t.s. and Director PeaceNiche, brought forward a case
study, ³The T2F Story.² The Second Floor (T2F) is the first project of
PeaceNiche, a non-profit organization committed to becoming a vibrant centre
of Pakistan’s developing civil society. Although T2F is a bricks and mortar
project, it has been marketed entirely through digital media and
word-of-mouth. This case study helped discover the power of e-mail, the web,
and social networking.

Dr. Irfan Ahmad Director, Yahoo! Middle East spoke on the subject ³Marketing
2.0 & Web 2.0 -Sifting Fact from Hype. This segment talked about where
Pakistani internet users can be found. Dr. Irfan gave a fascinating fact
that in 2000 there were 170,000 Yahoo! users in Pakistan as compared to 4.6
million Yahoo! users in 2008. Rightly so, Dr. Irfan stated, ³The internet is
the future Š less than 1% of Pakistan¹s advertising budget is being spent
online.²

Asif Iqbal SEO (Search Engine Optimization) addressed a segment on ³Expert
Mastering SEO and SEM² to drive the right online traffic as getting the
right traffic to your site is a challenge and this session ensured the
audience is up-to-date on the latest SEO and SEM.

The day culminated with a gripping presentation by Chris Schaumann¹s hour
long session on Social Media & Web 2.0. This segment guided the audience
thru the emancipation of the consumers powered by global communication
platforms (over 1.3b online users) and advances in software services as well
as consumer electronics giving way to digital social networking,
blogging/citizen journalism and prosumerism. Chris mentioned that research
shows 65% of all marketing spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers, 70% of
all Asian marketers are not tracking the effectiveness of their spending,
research shows that 86% of consumers no longer believe what brands say about
themselves whereas 78% of consumers believe what other consumers say about
brands.

Hamza W. Hashmi CEO Terrabiz welcomed the audience and Ms. Jehan Ara
President P@SHA gave vote of thanks. The event was supported by Etihad
Airways, CIO Pakistan, CNBC, Daily Express, Rozee.pk, P@SHA, MITCEF, and
Bramerz Pvt. Ltd.

After the 18th February elections, Pakistan is now going to go through the by-election (bye-election or bi-election as some call it) will be held on the 26th of June 2008. While countless number of national and international news media is going to cover to the even, for those who would want to check out the results, analysis and the party position, post by-elections, online should check out for these online resources.

1.    GEO.tv election cell
2.    Dawn news election cell
3.    Elections.com.pk
4.    Election commission of Pakistan (official results)

I will keep adding resources as I get to know of them. You can email me if you want your resource to be added.

I am wondering if this works on specific queries, or advance search operators. I have no clue.

http://sites.google.com/site/sites/