Twitter Unveils Ad-Supported Business Model

All eyes were on Twitter on April 13th, when it announced that it will start showing sponsored tweets on some search pages. A strong step towards traditional advertising business model promising to provide a steady source of revenue to this 4-year-old multi-billion dollar company.

The company said in a blog that it will place tweets from paying customers at the top of some Twitter search pages marked as ads. Users will be able to see these sponsored tweets only if they are following that particular account. Initially, these so called 'Promoted Tweets' will appear on only a small portion of search pages.

"Promoted Tweets will be labeled as 'promoted'. These tweets will retain all the features of a regular Tweet including length 140 characters, reply, Re-tweet, and marking as favorite but the content would be promotional keeping in mind expectations of Twitterrers. Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page and that is how they will be differentiated from a regular tweet." the announcement said earlier last week.

While, Twitter.com may be a popular destination but millions of people use desktop and smartphone apps to access it. Earlier, apps like Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone, made by a atebits, displayed ads in which Twitter had no share but all that has changed since Twitter’s purchase of a atebits last week. Now, Promoted Tweets will also appear in search results on Twitter apps. With this move the company aims to get a share from those platforms as well.

"Over the years, we’ve resisted introducing a traditional web advertising model because we wanted to optimize for value before profit," Twitter said. We recognized value in this exchange and planned to amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner."

Since Twitter’s launch, Industry has speculated and debated on its potential to make money. Twitter is a very flat organization with less than 200 employees & the company value of $1 billion. Apparently, Twitter makes millions from licensing its real-time data streams to Microsoft and Google.

So Twitter knows it must carefully toggle between an unpredictable user base which is the reason for its existence; Developers and tech enthusiasts responsible for their innovative work on Twitter clients & analytics tools and backers who expect great returns from the company.

Twitter will speak in greater detail about this at the AdAge conference later on Tuesday, and begins a two-day developer’s conference Wednesday called "Chirp."

Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Social Media came into existance since 2006 and has grown from there onwards to offer new online marketing technologies which made users share their opinions and experiences online in the form of text, links, images, audio and video.

Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is the recent activity which has captured the market. Social media looks at the social aspects of your business. It helps your business to flourish in the social media space. Social media platform leverages us to interact with visitors, users and customers in a better way.

SMO is all about the strategies that are being used to set up Social Media campaign for improving brand presence for your website/business. SMO allows your customers to learn about your business, interact and participate with you during their online experience.

Social Media Activities

• Tagging and Bookmarking
• Create a Blog
• RSS Feeds
• Discussion Forum
• Online Videos and Images
• Join social networking communities

Email Marketing

Email Marketing, is one of the most important internet marketing service for both online and offline businesses. It is becoming increasingly difficult to launch a successful email campaign due to the competitive market.

In the broader sense, it can be understood as - every e-mail sent to a potential customers is considered e-mail marketing. However, e-mail marketing can be defined as:

• sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the customer relationship and
  to encourage customer loyalty.
• sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers a well as
  convincing current customers to purchase something immediately.
• sending news letters to potential clients as e-mails to maintain a
  goodwill.

Direct E-mail Marketing is the fastest option for advertising your products and services . Email is one of the versatile and simple method to organize required the data base should be in a good shape. A proper and aggressive email marketing campaign delivers responses with in a short span of time. E-mail marketing has resulted in being the fastest medium to generate new business avenues & push the sales.

Email Marketing Benefits:

• Easily attracts new customers
• Keep in touch with existing customers
• Minimimun operating cost
• Simple method to organise
• Generates instant results
• Helps in generating repeat business.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM), is a form of Internet Marketing service which works to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) with the use of paid submissions, contextual advertising, or paid inclusion.

For a successful SEM campaign many different tools and strategies have to be used. Two most important requirements of SEM are Solid keyword research & identification of potential customer.

At its core, Search Engine Marketing leverages user purpose by optimizing an organic or paid search listing as per that user’s goal. Unlike blind placements on billboards, mass mailings etc, Search Engine Marketing serves up specific advertising via ad creative or search listing as per user requirements.

The premise of Search Engine Marketing whether organic or paid will provide the most relevant result for the query entered, in the form of a title, description, and URL.

Largest SEM Vendors

• Google AdWords,
• Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Microsoft adCenter

Why Search Engine Marketing?
Search Engine Marketing is the the first true worldwide platform to conduct business either through an advertising or marketing channel. Business continues to grow nationally and internationally with SEM. Industry statistics show that more and more advertisers and consumers are searching to buy and sell their products & services via SEM.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization abbreviated as SEO, is one of the most effective things one can do online. It is an active process of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to gain valuable traffic to the site from search engines via "natural" search results.

Why SEO is required?
If your website cannot be found by major search engines you miss out the opportunities available to the website provided via search results – as people search for specific terms, phrases, content, services, products, or information which you may be dealing in.

These search queries can be of extraordinary value to you. Investing in SEO, either through time or finances can result in an exceptional return on investment.

SEO is all about common sense and simplicity. The purpose of search engine optimization is to make a website as search engine friendly as possible.

It is important to understand how search engines work?
Search engines collect data about websites by sending an electronic spider to visit the site which stores the content of the website in search engine’s database. These spiders are known as ‘bots’. Starting in the top left hand corner, spider reads site content line by line from left to right.

Also, search engine optimization relies heavily on the proper use of keywords and keyphrases that describe the website's content.

SEO is an extremely powerful online marketing technique – use SEO wisely!

Internet Marketing Services

Internet Marketing Services includes the following:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is an art as well as a science. If your website attains a top positions on the Organic Search Results it is entirely the result of search engine optimization (SEO). For SEO process major search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. This is the shortest and the easiest way to search for the products and services on internet.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is shaping the way we work, play, shop and market ourselves online. SEM is marketing of products and services on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Search Engine Marketing is the base for the success of any online venture.
There exist two parts of SEM:

• Pay Per Click
• Affiliate Marketing

Email Marketing
Email Marketing is one of the most effective ways to advertise on the Internet! It is becoming increasingly difficult to launch a successful email marketing campaign. Now days, there is lot of competition that may minimize your exposure. Email is so versatile and relatively simple to organize, as long as your data base is in good shape. A typical email campaign will deliver responses within 72 hours. This is the fastest media to generate new business avenues & push the sale.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)
SMO campaigns increases visitor traffic and brand awareness. This type of marketing is an interactive marketing which helps to find out the customer views about various products and services.
In simpler terms, Social Media Optimization is the next advanced level of Internet Marketing which if combined with traditional SEO will surely reap a great success in online business.

Benefits of Internet Marketing

There are few benefits of the internet marketing which show up right away and other benefits that tend to happen further down the line. Let’s discover few of these benefits:

• Internet marketing helps you to attract potential customers who are in search of products and services that you offer.
• Marketing your business with pay per click advertising increases the probability of getting business from the ones who are looking for key services within a certain area.
• Internet marketing is a cost-effective outcome for advertising, a new business. However, in cases like banner or flash advertisements Internet marketing could result in lavish expenditure.
• No matter, whether your business is a small-scale or huge scale, it is very important to advertise in order to compete. Internet marketing is truly helpful in getting the target audience.
• One of the major goals of Internet marketing is to present the website in a way that it stands out of the crowd.
• E-mail marketing is a type of Internet marketing that helps you to reach thousands of people at the same time.
• Through Internet marketing you can advertise using affiliate programs. You can choose any product according to your interest and expertise and can earn by promoting chosen product. This is where the beauty of Internet marketing lies.
• Along with these advantages, there are a few more advantages such as 24*7 presences, flexibility, better sales performance, broaden revenue horizons, worldwide popularity, chances to expand business in a shorter span.

Having a well designed website encourages the prospective clients and customers to get a sense of who you are and what your business is all about. The more you are able to get targeted customers to your web site, the more you will be able to generate leads.