Butchart Gardens, Victoria, BC 228

Butchart Gardens, Victoria, BC 228, originally uploaded by Tim Yuan.

Seen on Flickr and it was amazing. Flickr is one of my favorite photo site

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Google Officially Introduces Ad Planner

Google has introduced new tool to advertisers called ad planning tool that advertisers measure their audience, I think Google is specially targeted for ad agency work with them, according to their pres release on adwords blogspot accounts holders have large no of accounts can gain from ad planner. We can get the best publisher list to open ads depending on the target audience. We have enter t our target audience and the sites that our audience already visits. Then ad planner will give other sites that target audience visit.

The idea was smart with current PPC rival. We do not wast our money on putting ads on unwanted sites.

Pisa's leaning tower 'stabilised'

Visiting to Florence or Pisa in Italy may be a dream of most of travelers and if anyone had a chance to visit Florence or Pisa, don’t miss the leaning tower of Pisa. Everyone know, it is one of seven wonders and construction began in 1173, due to poor planning and building laid constructions today leaning tower is leans at the angel of 3.97 degrees .

And I saw a news saying that now it stops moving in its 800 years history..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_Tower_of_Pisa

http://torre.duomo.pisa.it/

50 Golden Brands

Marketing Society has announced the 50 golden brands in the world that created amazing names for last 50 years among many people.


today, The Marketing Society is the most influential network of senior marketers dedicated to championing marketing in the UK

Are you an Excel Experts?

Do you want to become excel expert? I hope every marketer need to use excel when they do various data analysis regarding their products, brands or customers. But I have seen some marketers think knowledge of excel is not need to fine tune the their job, it is statistics analysts’ job and the tool they used. But I know with my experience, mastering excel always help to save our time and the effective analysis can carried out. Small functions help to convert row data to meaningful decisions. Presentation of findings can be more attractive and effective.

I thought to summarized some features I used when I am doing my day today analysis by using excel.

01. Text to columns

This feature helps to separate the part of content in one cell. If one column has most similar content and you want to separate those to several columns, you can do it by using this feature by selecting a special character like , space, _ and etc. or even using fixed width.

02. Past special

Past all will past the original data and if you need to change the formatting or formula, again you have to select the needed cells and do the formatting.

If you click on formula, only formula will copy not the data will come, if need dame formula to apply another place, this is ideal way to copy and add the data to that cells.

If you want to add data in one location with data in another location, use the past special and tick on add – operation. Then new cell will show the sum of both cells, as same adding, you can subtract, multiply or divide the two data sets. No need to use formula or the third cell to combine both

If you data are spreaded and it is more difficult to remove the blank cells , do not worry, select all the cells which contain data and the blank too and copy special to another cell and tick “skip blanks” then all spec will remove’

When I was university, I was trying to convert column data to row data. But that time it could not possible me to at one click, poorly, I did one by one copied. But now I know, select the column you want and past special and tick transpose, then data will copies to raw as same order. It was very easy for me than copy one by one, when the data cells are large no, you will feel the release from it.

There are more I have notice, will continue this next week too

Yahoo!-Google partnership could raise keyword prices

Google is now planning to put adwords ads on yahoo search engine. now this deal is hot topic from few days... any way i feel this will lead bid price go up. see this article

Somehow Google seems to have come out on top again, landing a search deal with Yahoo that by some estimates could boost its revenue by $1 billion—and may leave some advertisers footing larger sums for their keyword buys.

The near-universal prediction from search-engine marketers is the largest player in search, both by audience and ad spending, is set to get bigger, thanks to a 10-year deal that will have it serving search ads on the No. 2 player’s queries.

Already Google’s numbers are impressive: eMarketer pegs its 2008 share of net search-ad dollars at 76.4% to Yahoo’s 7.3%. And the research firm said Google’s gross search-ad revenue—the total Google brings in before it pays out revenue to its affiliate partners, such as Ask and AOL—is 90%. From a search traffic-share standpoint, ComScore reports Google hit 61.6% in April while Yahoo and Microsoft nabbed 20.4% and 9.1%, respectively.

full story

Do you try Viral Marketing ?

Viral marketing is now more popular among moden marketers and social media was the main channel to boom this strategy. Early era of social media or web 2.0, marketers were reluctant to use this and some popular web 2.0 sites also may not allow to reach their site and members through any strategy. But eventually those companies now allow companies to create corporate profile and reach the audience. You tube, face book pages and ads are recent examples that I can noted. Not only that myspace, Flickr, Dailymotion also have several features to use by companies. Even without these prior approval, clever marketers were done smart viral effect campaigns through these web 2.0 sites. To bringing more visitors, sign up members, conversion, brand awareness , new product launch etc done through this.

I read some successful viral marketing campaigns recently.

Columbia Sportswear

White Horse agency was the company created this campaign. Campaign was named as "Tested Tough" and

They asked to submit a description, photos and videos by customers and anyone. And they allow to comment on that content and members can share their thoughts with friends and family. When members done it large scale, there is more possibility to win. Views, votes and comments are the parameters to selecting winners and contest selected winners every week. The campaign included email, online display advertising and viral seeding through contest sites. Success rate of this campaign is greater than 33%.

Pink for the Cure

General Mills launched this campaigns to battle against breast cancer. Company asked to spread hopeful stories of those who touched by the disease. They have created a myspace page and some more related networks. Visitors can share their stories, add comments and down load badges and backgrounds for their own pages. You won’t believe , this campaign reached more than 2.7 million people.

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3 Days in Rome

Visiting Rome once in a life is must, we have so many reason to it, the history, modern developments, fashion etc. Actually 3 days is not enough to cover all the must places to visit in Rome. But at least need three days to see most popular place there. I listed most places anyone can visit Rome.

St Peters

Pantheon

St. Peters in Chains (vincole)

Spanish Steps

Fontana de Trevi

Piazza Navona and the three fountains

Cat Sanctuary at Argentina

Pont St. Angelo

Capitoline Hill

The Sistine Chapel

Walking around the Colosseum and nearby Arch

A stroll down via Guilia

Rome Pass

Get a Rome pass, it offers free use of public transport and two free museum entrance tickets. Sometimes they offer discounts for selective venues and events.

While you visiting historic places, you can do shopping too. But be aware, some shops are extremely costly. Your wallet may not enough to buy all the item you see. I heard there are bargain shops, but could not remember the places, once I notice will keep a note.

Webjet and eBay have just announced a new partnership

Webject is a online trave company in Australia and partnered with eBay Australia to expand their more than 50000 hotel base to larger customer base from eBAy.

“Unlike many other forms of distribution, eBay has a unique and very special community of members of enormous size and marketing strength in the Australian region,’’ Webjet managing director David Clarke said.

eBay vice-president Simon Smith said the website’s members have told the company that they love the idea of being able to find broader travel offerings on eBay.

news link

Dailymotion - share your videos

Web 2.0, social media, connecting people, so many words come to my mind, when I visit to Dailymotion site. As all know it is now getting more popular among people as Video sharing web site, similar as YouTube. This company based in Paris, france. This site was started one month early than youTube. I saw several article says now they are getting more than 16000 new videos daily and page views more than 26 million a day. Alexa index ranked this site in 38 place.

How marketers can use this video sites to promote their brands or products?

Smart marketers now already using this social media sites to create brand awareness and use as a communication channel. Coz some expert already predicted that search engine may not be the future way to get information, people visits to sites and collect information and get other colleague’s idea about their decisions or searching’s

Official Content feature

This the formal way to use Dailymotion video sharing facility to promote brands by marketers. Companies can create videos relating to their brands, products, new product introduction, promotional campaigns and up load to this section by obeying the terms & conditions there. All the videos submit under Officla content facility banded with “Offical content” logo.

You don’t need to pay, it is free and need to join Official Content partners program.

Dailymotion noted that all members can enjoy below benefits by joining as Offical content partner with them

• increased account visibility as an “Official User”
• increased video visibility thanks to the “OfficialContent” overlay affixed to each of your video’s thumbnail previews
• a custom profile skin made to your specifications

viral effect is the most powerful tool in social media now. Marketers can create some funny/comedy videos to get others attention and indirectly add the branding or product features to the videos, if people like and enjoy it, they will spread it to others very soon.

High Definition ( HD)

They have separate section to the highest quality video and this section is one of the most attractive section on site. See some HD videos in Dailymotion

Contest in Dailymotion

This is another way to have a buzz in video world to marketers. As I said earlier, we can create funny/ comedy or timely videos and submit to contest, if you become a winner, no matter, you will get thousands and thousands view and get registered to people’s mind.

"Heroes" Dedicated to the brave people in Sichuan Earthquake, 2008

This is not created by me and may not know about the person who made. but I got this story sent my husband. but with my office work, I did not have time to go through and another reason, why I didn't open the mail, day before i got this mail, got another mail with some photos and it was really shocked me.

When I backed to home, husband asked me about the mail and I said, did not open the mail. He said that it was really sensitive and once he read all tears came to his eyes. So I went through it and happened same.

So thought to keep a note and appreciate the creature of this mail and proud about the courageousness and helpfulness of all chines people and other people around the world. We have to help others , specially when they desperately need others hands to get up.

This videos are on BBC news

Still Google in the Game

This year, most of search engine have slowness in Paid clicks to their search engine. But still google is gaining. Comscore reveals that google report 19% growth in April 2008 compared to last year April. But Yahoo and MSN reported negative growth.

This story is in Fortune

Google can enjoy the benefit and others have to sit and think what to do to secure their share in search engine war.. I read and post one article last week that live search is going to rebate their customer who do shopping through live search. Others also have to think and active fast to keep the market share

This google one man show is not healthy for advertisers too. They don’t think and increase the bids to get premium positions at google and when the competition is going up, no one can reduce the PPC cost. This will badly affect on ROI. Then should look at alternative way to get visitors to individual company sites.

Fly always, tickets on internet. – 100% e-tickets from Emirates now

Emirate is the dubai base airline has widest coverage in all over the world and they started e-ticketing and continuing it. Now it is done 100%.

Divisional Vice President, Keith Longstaff, said

“"We are pleased to have fully achieved e-ticketing across our online operations ahead of IATA's deadline, and to have concluded this process with over 100 of our interline partners. Emirates has a dedicated team focussed on rolling it out across all of our global network. It has been a huge undertaking not only because our network was continually expanding, but also because of the complexity of our operations”

Full story at….

customer Loyalty in Online Industry

This was debating theme in time to time. Some experts says, it is very hard to have loyal customers in online industry due to switching cost is very low or zero to customer, with one click, they can find another alternative or best supplier for their product or service. But some expert agreed with other side of story. They said, there is customer loyalty with online companies and even at high price customers tend to book with familiar supplier. Trust, confidence with product or service is very important and customer engagement came to play major role. To build and keep the brand awareness customer engagement is must. Email is one strategy and loyalty program is another best option. Personalization is very much important here when contacting customers through mails, no one like to have junk mails from any company which previously bought any thing. And if they getting a offer or content to match their needs, they will use it when need it.

This article show the role of email campaigns can play as a activity of customer engagement