One of the perennial questions about the role of blogging and bloggers in the evolving media landscape is what standards for responsibility, accountability and ethics one basically, is one of credibility.

The argument is often framed as a comparison of the reliability of traditional-pre-internet, if you will-news media and their contributors, with that of the blogosphere and bloggers. Proponents of traditional media often argue that the formal structure and processes of gathering, vetting, and delivering news, information and opinion provide the kind of quality control for their “product” that one can’t expect from the fast and loose, editor-less world of blogging.

Having worked in both media to some extent in US –my first reaction to such discussions or arguments is frustration. Any discussion that frames this is as pure “editor-or” proposition is not dealing with reality; no single medium operates in a vacuum; the media for the collection and dissemination of information interact with each other, and always have.

The days of newspapers as the sole provides for those services are gone. Even before the internet, radio and television played a complementary role to print media. News of coups, riots earthquakes and other events-very often broken by media outlets such as BBC World Services, CNN and so on. These have come to play a very integral role in the lives of lot of people around the world. We often find out about change in Government and acts of God from these news services. The next days, newspapers fill in the picture with news, views and interviews. In the same way, blogs (other related tools such as micro blogging services like twitter) now extend the spectrum of information media to an even more immediate level. For example, for several days last year, the only information- particularly pictures coming out of the troubled South Asian country of Myanmar was to be found on blogs and other similar sites.

Of course, it is the more inclusive nature of blogging that is really being alluded to above that is often the root of much more the critique of blogging. The point made is that since anybody and his dog can start a bog and start “reporting” and expression opinions, we should not trust anything that is posted on a blog. I exaggerate that starkness of that argument, but that is what it boils down to.

The main argument, as it is more soberly made, is that traditional news media organization have a structure in place for researching, confirming, and double checking information before it becomes part of the public records; the implication being that blogs don’t and therefore their content is by definition of lower quality and less credible. As I see it, there are two problems with that picture.

Firstly, while bloggers may not have a staff of editors and fact checkers, blogs live on a very tight feedback loop and have to compete in a very tight feedback loop and have to compete in a very competitive ecosystem where any mistake are almost instantaneously noticed and are mercilessly debunked or validated. The only major “scandals” involving fake content blogs that have a wide readership have been in the US. For example, “Lonely Girl 15” briefly becomes a huge phenomenon – till it was discovered that the person putting out a detailed look at her life was not a real lonely girl but an actress performing for professionally-produced videos. On the other hand, every year, one or two major newspaper in the US has had to own up about writers who had fabricated stories.

I’m talking about internationally-respected icons of traditional media. In some places consumers of media have a whole other layer of awareness of the shortcomings of traditional media that needs to be factored in. As for local media, I personally know enough journalists of such high integrity and professionalism that I feel if there is any hope for traditional media in a changing global media landscape, it s with these Third Word Profession. The addition of the new bridge of concerned amateurs and want to be citizen journalists, if nothing else, can provide the much-needed infusion of a new wave of idealism and a check on the traditional media.

The blogosphere and other “new media” have added a new dimension to the media landscape, with a whole new set of strength and weakness. As both old and new media have to share the information collection landscape and compete for audience, they will have work out what roles they will play in this brave new world- and how they will check and balance each other.

Since the online marketing is relatively a new discipline, online marketers spend more time “performing“activities and less time to plan them. This happens as a result of little formal education and information available regarding this discipline and planning on the go does work for many, if not all. However, this strategy misses out on the broader picture, the medium and long term game plan, and most importantly the discipline to achieve goals and objectives.

A search engine marketing plan comprises all activities that fall under the online marketing discipline.

• Search Engine Marketing usually done to achieve some objective
• Search Engine Marketing activities are start by first identifying the target market.
• To achieve your goal in search engine marketing indentify key players in the industry is critical.

Once the target market and marketing objectives are outlined, its time to identify the marketing channels that will be used to communicate and deliver the message. A comprehensive Search Engine Marketing plan would comprise:

Search Engine Advertising (Pay Per Click)

Implementing this requires extensive keyword research, advertisement group’s creation, creating landing pages and overall performance monitoring. The benefit of search engine advertising is instant, relevant traffic on the website. On the other hand, it is expensive and requires some training and understanding of how most pay per click (PPC) advertising systems work.

Search Engine Optimization

The plan should include the long term strategy of creating onsite and offsite popularity online. Strategy may include keyword research, link building strategies, and ongoing monitoring and maintenance.

Banner Advertising

Various online advertising networks provide targeted reach for rich media and plain banners. With good planning, the banner networks can deliver the message to target segments in a cost-effective manner. The banner networks usually work on cost-per-impression (CPM) model.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing strategies involve creating an attractive affiliate program through which potential affiliates would want to promote the affiliate program through various advertising networks. The process also involves recruiting and managing the affiliates.

Social media marketing

New social media marketing strategies use social networks such as Facebook , YouTube, MySpace etc. to build and maintain strong communities. Social networks are also useful for spreading interesting news and important information about the brand and the business.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail Marketing strategies involve building an opt –in base of users who are willing to accept e-mails, identifying the software and technology to send e-mails, and software to track e-mail deliveries. Some marketers may also choose to buy opt- in e-mail lists from list providers.

Building Alliances

Building strategic business alliance is a great way to promote the business while generating revenue. Strategies involve identifying potential alliance and contacting them for a mutually beneficial partnership.

Online Public Relations

Strategies to utilize online media channels, social media networks and electronic publications to create awareness and maintain a positive image of the business is a critical part of the online marketing plan. Strategies including identifying key industry publications, forums and influential bloggers to contact when there is news to spread.

Blogging

Strategies include creating the kind of content that could be promoted through blogs and blogs networking with influential blogs grants instant access to a large targeted audience. Three factors should be determined for each of the marketing channels mentioned above.

• The cost of bringing a visitor to the website.
• Conversion rate
• The profit expected from each sale.

Before using any channel, the campaign’s conversion rate should be established. The table below illustrates an example of acceptable conversion rates for some online channels.

Conversion rate depend on a large number of factors and the figures shown above should not be benchmarks. For example, a popular brand or services will always have better conversion rates compared to a new entrant. Tools like Google Analytics give comprehensive conversion tracking information and should be used to measures the effectiveness of a channel. Some channels might work better for some marketers and not for others. Testing experimenting and measuring is inevitable.

The actions and results that determine success should be identified while making an electronic marketing plan. This could be sales revenues, brand awareness and so on. Proper feedback mechanisms and regular views enable assessment of the particularly dynamic and rapidly changing are. Tools such as Google Analytics provide a wide array o reports and are helpful with measuring such results.

Market your product effectively online using web 2.0

Imagine heading an advertising agency with a total budget of 100$ to 150$. Chances are that no headway will be made to any traditional marketing avenue until one agrees to volumetrically increase their spending. As opposed to this, one can try to services of an online advertising agency. Fortunately, having a 200$ plus budget is a sign of mediocre prosperity when it comes to marketing online.

The most striking aspect of online advertising is the low baseline-level price, that is, the amount of money needed to take the first step into the marketing arena. For example, marketing on television or print media requires a sizable budget at hand, which can result in a large amount that is to be invested. Internet marketing on the other hand, can have its engine working for a few dollars with a simple pay-per click model. The internet is technologically superior to the other forms of media, an attribute that embellishes it with increased advantages. Thanks to IP addresses, every user has a distinct identity, can be contacted and tracked down to a geographical location. In other words online advertisers not only broadcast their own messages, but can also receive information about their audience.

Television radio or print is different in that they are centrally broadcast and can’t usually keep track of where the content ends up. With the two-way exchange provided by the internet, advertisers can vary their interaction with different audiences.

Having as ad on American television channel may need a huge budget and broadcasting infrastructure, but on the internet, it simply means routing specific advertising content to the audience with IP addresses from the target region. Targeting advertisements geographically also opens up enormous avenues for marketing. An ad placed on European website can given as much value as that on local one in terms of funneling clicks.

These days, geographic targeting is not the only way you can funnel your message in to the right minds. With the associated marketing experience, advertisements can be more specific and related to each age group, gender, interests and hobbies.

Internet Marketing Tools:

The most basic tool for effective online marketing is a rich, content – filled online presence. That means having one’s online campaign laden with written content, images, videos or whatever the next technology brings in line (aura, smell, emotions, who knows!).

The good thing about contributing content online is that is free and one is encouraged to participate. What makes the internet a useful tool for marketers and consumers alike is the tremendous amount of information available and enhancing online content can be rewarding in more than one way (higher search engine ranking, revenue from advertising and above all, an audience interested in the company’s products).

For online content placement, suitable places to begin with would be business blog pages, dedicated websites, online video sites, or third-party websites. Having content on a blog or a web site gives one more control and implies direct relevance to the business, while third-party websites line ezines and specific forums grant better traffic. The latter may suit a beginner, but originally content should be added t one’s own websites as well.

Within the broader sphere of the Web, there lies a more interactive facet – the social networks. The most distinct characteristics of social networking sites, for marketers, is perhaps the amount of personal information of users collected and complied. This data can be used for online campaigns geared towards specific consumers. This does not mean that marketers have access to the personal information of the users. However, information that is relevant for advertising is used by social networking services to optimize advertising. Such information includes geographical information, interest’s profession or age.

Paid marketing is not the only way to exploit the potential of social marketing, though it is the most effective. One can use social networking services to passively reach out to more people, build a fan base attract visitors to one’s business landing page and spread awareness about one’s core competencies.

Recent entrants to online small business promotions are the online business directories. These directories provide local search engines and show case their collection of different businesses. One such website provides services for online retailers, complete with search listings, product catalogue and interactivity tools, with a Web 2.0 marketplace in mind.

Online Marketing Issues:

In a country of 160 million people, marketers surly can’t be expected to reach high audience numbers even with the most effective optimization. The good news is that this internet population is clustered around few parameters. From a local perspective, the internet web us spun over the big cities, making them particularly dense in terms of connectivity. Then, the time spent and the nature of online activities is distinguished according to demographics.

For example, young professionals and students spend much more time online than the older generation does. This clustering means then if your target market fits in a specific cluster with deeper internet penetration, internet marketing can provide you with a higher value for your advertising money than radio or billboard advertising. However, if the particular bracket that your business aspires to target and sell to is not enough, then, just online marketing will not do the trick.

Online marketing also complements business that sell products that are more relevant to internet population. Meanwhile, in the more mature, western markets, virtually anything can be marketed and sold online. Most of the products potentially marketable on the internet revolve around a few niche areas equipment and fashion. One reason for this is that unlike in western countries, this country’s online population is not representative of all segments of local societies. Hence, only consumers segments which are online targeted through online marketing campaigns.

Another issue that feeds on itself is the lack of local content available online. It is important to have one’s own content to back an online advertising campaign. Reliability and creditability are also issues associated with online marketing. Any information that is obtained over the internet, about a business is regarded with suspicion, and unless scrutinized and backed by traditional sources is not usually accepted. In these days of economic downturn, using internet marketing tools can lead to great benefits if one is bale to maintain the campaign’s integrity by updating regularly.

It is possible to cost effectively market your product online, but only if certain tools are used sensibly to sharpen its value. The product should be relevant to the local maintained and improved with regular frequency.

Spurred by a 20-minutes user average of fruitless Web searching, Microsoft is pioneering a new search engine that reportedly understands users better.

The search engine, Kumo.com, us being privately tested by Microsoft workers in hope, that it will power the US software giant out of a distant third place in a market dominated by Google.

Kumo reportedly understands sentences and relationship between words by using semantic technology.

Current search engines, including software used by Google, rely on matching types words with websites and online data. There is speculation regarding whether Microsoft intends to replace its Live Search with Kumo since an internal memo written about it by Satya Nadella, a Microsoft senior vice president, was leaked online earlier last month.

The number of US Internet users watching videos at YouTube hit a new monthly high in March, topping 100 million as it dominated the online video arena according to comScore.

The overall number of videos watched online in the US climbed 4 % from the previous month to 14.8 billion, with YouTube viewing accounting for 91% of that growth, reports comScore.

Google-owned websites, predominantly YouTube, ranked at the top of the US online video heap with 6.4 billion snippets watched during the month, according to comScore.

Fox interactive Media, which owns online social networking, services Myspace, had the second highest number of videos viewed – 552 million. Yahoo! Online destinations were third with 374 million videos watched, the industry tracking group reported.

Approximately 147 million US internet users watched an average of 101 online videos, with 102 million of those people using Google-owned sites, according to comScore. Ninety-nine% of the video viewing at Google websites took place at YouTube. Fox Interactive saw the second highest number of online viewers, attracting 62.1 million people. MySpace accounted for 54.1 million of those online video watchers.