Getting down to Business

This month, let's look at some websites which can actively help us out in our daily business activities. There are some things which are always needed in any industry, and we'll try and cover some here.

Backing up Contacts

Cardscan@yourservice is a utility where you can back up all your Outlook contacts. This means that anywhere in the world, from any computer, anytime, you will have access to your contacts. This is tremendously helpful if you’re a person who travels frequently and has a lot of contacts to be in touch with, but may not always have your own laptop where all your data is stored.

You’ll need to register (free) and download & install a tool on your computer that has your Outlook contacts. This utility will regularly back up all contact updates made, on the web. It’s confidential and private; synchronization ensures that the latest (within 24 hours) data is available online; and it’s a must-have if you change companies, to retain all your contacts and update your new details.

www.cardscan.net

Sending Large Files

Have you ever needed to send a very large file(s), immediately, and with no time to burn a CD and courier? Your IT department can’t set up a FTP in time? Just use an online file transfer service like www.yousendit.com (100 MB, free), www.mailbigfile.com (100 MB, free), www.youswap.com (1 GB, free), or www.dropsend.com (1 GB, needs free registration). All of these will upload your large files, and generate a link, which you can send to the receiver that allows them to download, or an automatic email to the receiver with download instructions. Uploaded files expire after a fixed time for greater security.

Sharing Diagrams

Flowcharts, organization charts, floor plans, user interface design, networks… anything which requires sharing and discussion of diagrams, this is it. A simple interface that allows you to draw the basics, save it online, share it privately, or publish it as a web URL for public access. Add images from the net or your own computer too!

www.gliffy.com

Sharing Images

Need to send or share photographs of events, conferences, work done, etc? Use Picasa. It’s a free app from Google, which you need to download once; just set the folder in which you store your photos, and it keeps track of all photos added from there on. It also allows you to correct minor flaws in the images like straightening, cropping to the right size, adding special effects, making collages, etc… but the best feature of Picasa is the ability to publish web albums. You can select all those photos you want to publish, and they get hosted on www.picasaweb.com. After publishing, you get a URL which you can use to share the images. Privacy options are available, and it even has a feature allowing you to publish selected photos or albums to your blog. It’s all free, and you just need a Gmail account.

www.picasaweb.google.com

Download the Picasa setup from www.google.com, by clicking the ‘more’ option above the toolbar and scrolling down to ‘Picasa’.

Publishing PDF documents

You’ll often need to create PDF documents of your work. This is specially needed in case of contracts, agreements, etc or other documents where you don’t want people to change the content, or present a much more polished and professional image (in case of important reports), or create downloadable brochures. PDFonline allows you to create word docs, excel sheets, powerpoint slides, and even images and text documents, and uploads them onto the site. It then creates a PDF file, and mails it to the email address specified by you in minutes.

www.pdfonline.com

Leisure periods

There are times in office – unfortunately, too few and far between – when you have no work, nobody yelling for deadlines, and you’re a loose end. Rather than fall asleep in your chair – bad for spine and image alike – why don’t you take the opportunity to reconnect with old friends, find new ones, share your latest, and maybe even get a new job, or find a business partner. Let’s look at some of the networking sites around.

www.orkut.com – Orkut is essentially a place where you can put up a profile, including work, photos, wants, interests, likes and dislikes, but the real fun begins in its’ scrapbook system – where anyone can leave a message for you – and in its’ communities, where any subject you can think of can be talked over with like-minded people.

People that you may not have met for decades will suddenly turn up, sometimes exactly as they were, sometimes changed out beyond recognition. People you may never have met, may become lifelong friends from a single shared interest. And it’s almost as good as a messenger for sending quick, brief messages that will always be accessible.

How do you join? You need a google account, and since Orkut works on a by-invite system, at least one person to send you an invite. And once you’re online, you can start building up your own friend list.

www.linkedin.com – Unlike Orkut, which is all about fun and friendship, Linkedin is a very straightforward, no-nonsense, business-only site. Your profile itself doesn’t bother about hobbies, or interests – it reads more like an extremely detailed CV. All contacts, messages, and comments are tagged with the writer’s work profile. People in your network can add a recommendation of their experience working with you, as an online reference. (These recommendations give a snapshot of you when anyone is searching for a service in your industry, by the way) When anyone in your network changes a job, gets a new profile, or adds a new connection, it’s updated on your home page, so it’s a great way to track ex-colleagues’ and friends’ careers.

Other interesting features – the ability to ask questions to your network, which can be answered by anyone and is visible to all. An email signature design that offers all recipients of your emails a quick snapshot of your profile, added to your outlook mails. Updates on who is hiring, and where. Finding people who offer certain services you may need. And most of all, it’s an always-updated, anywhere-available online CV with recommendations and references for you.

How to join? No problem; just go to www.linkedin.com, sign up, and you’re ready. Linkedin also has a useful feature of letting you invite everyone in your Gmail, Microsoft outlook, Hotmail, AOL or Yahoo email list, via a slightly lengthy but well-explained feature. And otherwise, all you need to invite people is just their name and email.

www.ryze.com – This is somewhere between the above two, in terms of allowing you to use it as a business tool, or a social networking site. Like orkut, it has communities and interest groups you can join and participate in; like linkedin, it lets you define your work and search for companies and profiles, and defines each person by his work profile. However, it has several unique features of it’s own that make it lots of fun. For instance, you can create your own page, rather than just fill up fields pre-set for you. If you know HTML, this can make your page as unique and customized as you want. Ryze also publishes a regular update on events, which is a great way to keep you updated on the latest happenings in your city.

Biggest disadvantage – you cannot connect with people directly, unless you’re a paid member or you already know his email id.

Biggest advantage – an events update that comes directly to your inbox.

Word of warning – remember, the internet is a public place. Use a sense of caution in your interactions, especially when it concerns personal info.

Internet Planning – Insights

Ad Networks

In internet planning, it’s easy to reach ‘everyone’ – the generic user, one who checks his mail, chats, and surfs, by going onto India’s top sites.

But what happens when you want to reach a user with specialized tastes? For example - Architects. Fitness fanatics. Artists. Gamers. Auto enthusiasts. Students aspiring to go abroad. Heart patients. Music fans. Travellers. Fashion designers. Programmers and techies.

And what if the audience you are trying to reach is not in India? There’s only so much Indian sites can offer, and it falls short; the best of websites with specialized content may be outside India, in any one of a dozen countries. And the user who wants information, will not confine himself to his country; If he finds any website which has info relevant to him, he will take it from there, regardless of where it is located. The very nature of the internet allows and encourages that.

So how can you ensure that your brand is visible to him?

This is where a specialist group of media owners – Ad Networks – step in. These are global networks who purchase adspace on hundreds of thousands of websites all over the world, and keep records of each websites’ content, it’s traffic, the type of people who visit them, where they come from, etc.

An ad network can be briefed on your objectives, your TG can be defined. The ad network will look at it’s list of websites and select those fitting with your goals, and run your ads there. And don’t worry about wastage – you can ensure that your ad is shown only to visitors to that website from your target country alone, while still sitting here in India. You won’t be paying for the whole world seeing and ignoring your ad.

In fact, it gets even more interesting. Ad networks, because they can also track unique visitors – can also track the same user as he travels to other sites in the same network.

So? Imagine you are selling Product X. You can tell the same person “Buy my X!” on one site, then “Go ahead and compare – my product X is till better!” on the next (tech review site), and “Don’t waste money playing games here! Buy X and play to your heart’s content!” on the next (gaming site) to the same person. Each user is exposed to customized messages depending on where he surfs.

In short – Ad networks will allow you to have a presence on over several thousand websites, specifically tailored according to the kind of user you are trying to reach.

Some ad networks –
www.tribalfusion.com
www.advertising.com
www.valueclick.com
www.ozonemedia.com
www.indiaads.com

Wikipedia

If you ever run across a term you don’t understand in real life, you reach for the dictionary. On the net, it’s google – to the extent that the term has become a verb, “just google it.” But often Google, because of the sheer volume of results it shows, may not always be the best option, sometimes confusing, sometimes misleading.

A better option is wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) which is best understood as an online encyclopedia – bigger and more detailed than all others put together. A search on any subject will give you not only an understanding of the subject, but also it’s history, related articles, references and cross-references… the works. And since all the data is being constantly updated and manually verified, it’s pretty much the most accurate data source.

Meebo
www.meebo.com

This site is a godsend for all those who are in firewalled offices, where Instant Messengers like Yahoo!, Gtalk, or MSN are banned or don’t work. Just type in the URL, and you get an interface where you can log in with either your Yahoo, MSN or Gtalk ID. What you then get is a web-based interface that’s nearly as fast as your regular messenger application.

The real fun in meebo comes out when you register, though. It’s free, and you can create a single profile and password which will log on ALL your ID’s in one window. So your Gtalk, Yahoo and MSN buddy lists – including multiple ID’s – will get combined in one interface. And it’s accessible from anywhere, no need to install anything.

You can even add your AIM, ICQ or Jabber ID’s, if you use those.

For the tech-savvy, there’s more features – Meebo lets you design a widget, or a piece of code via a simple interface, that you can add to your blog or personal website and allow anyone seeing your site to chat with you.

Meebo has a very friendly, casual feel to it; this is best seen in a meebo blog window which keeps telling the users on the latest happenings inside meebo, and even involves them in some decisions- like the latest Meebo pet, a kitten, which was named by user poll.

Internet Planning – The Brand Manager’s Guide

So the super-boss has approved the idea of advertising online, and your agency’s presented you with their internet marketing plan.

How can you understand and evaluate it?
Obviously, you need to be able to understand what they’re talking about; so, just open the plan / presentation, and open up www.marketingterms.com. The first link on the page is a dictionary of internet terms; and all the stuff like impressions, page views, frequency caps, CPMs, clickthrough rates, will stop looking like IIT Chemistry and start looking like a better CV and a bigger bonus.

Don’t panic; just go through the presentation, looking up each word you don’t get, and it will make sense. If there’s a term you can’t find, just google it.

Once you’ve finished this, you’re through step one – understanding what is being said. Now you won’t be getting confused with the language and jargon. You’re ready for the next step – after understanding what they said, you’ll need to know why they said it.

In other words – evaluation.
How do you say if the sites they chose are good, bad, or any better than what you thought?

Start with Alexa (www.alexa.com). Alexa works on a sampling principle – it has a toolbar that you can choose to install, and this keeps a track of all sites you visit and updates it’s central database. Don’t worry, it’s anonymous and harmless.

Go to the traffic rankings section, at the top of the page. This lets you see what are the most popular sites, global, country-wise, and language-wise, and you can enter any site URL and get it’s traffic details. The details will include stuff like:

• Rankings – how popular is this site amongst all those 10,000+ Alexa toolbar-users.
• Page view counts – how many pages on an average are seen by each person while on that site
• Reach – How many per million visit this site, and
• Related links - Other similar sites.

With this, you can take a call on comparing two sites; say, if your agency suggested site X, but you think site Y is better, you can actually see the difference. Page view count will tell you what properties are good; low page views means you should look at home pages only, and higher ones means more people are exploring the site’s inside pages. And the comparison feature at the bottom of each graph gives you professional, neat little graphs for your presentations.

I recommend installing the toolbar. It gives the rank of each site you’re on, a list of similar sites, with all other info available at a click.

So, you’re on your way to becoming an expert on websites. What about searches?
Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) is a quick way to see what the world is searching for. Just type in the word you’re curious about – your brand, product, category, service, etc – and get an overview of where the searches are happening for that word. You can do a comparison with your competition by separating with commas, and see the results by country / city / language, and by month / year.

Unfortunately, this is only a relative graph; you can’t see the exact number of searches, but it’s good for comparisons.

Where can you use this?

A higher search volume for anything in a particular region will show that people there want it but don’t know where to get it… so, new markets. Or which brand is creating a bigger buzz, prompting people to search for it. Or who’s more popular.

When you have some time to spare, just open up these sites and explore. It’s the best way to find out, and you might find some fascinating results.

And it makes a great conversation topic during the breaks, too! For instance – did you know that Delhi is the only place in India where Garfield is more popular than Dilbert? Find anything interesting like this about your brand?