Rise and shine of the young!

Marissa Mayer – CEO, Yahoo – Age 37

Year	Age	Position
1975	0	Born
1993	18	Graduated from Wausau West High School
1999	24	Joined Google
2012	37	President & CEO, Yahoo

• Active on twitter at https://twitter.com/marissamayer
• Joined Yahoo when she was 5 months pregnant and took two weeks of maternity leave.
• Banned Work From Home policy.
• Extended maternity leave to 16 weeks of paid leave from 8 weeks of paid leave.
• M&A
• Bought online blogging forum Tumblr for $1.1 Billion owned by David Karp (26 now)

• Bought London startup Summly for $30 million owned by a teenage entrepreneur - Nick D'Aloisio (17 now). S’Aloisio and Summly team to join Yahoo.

Mittu Chandilya – Head, Air Asia India – Age 33

• MBA from INSEAD, a part time model, non aviation background.
• Last - Head of services practice for Asia-Pacific at executive search firm Egon Zehnder.

SEO vs SEM

'Search' is an important part of your digital marketing strategy. Developing a website without focusing on search optimization is like building a product and locking it inside a safe.
When you focus on Search, you focus on either Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).Before the business decides which strategy to adopt, it is important to understand each of the strategies and how it meets the business objective.
SEO increases the visibility of a website on a search engines organic results page. SEM increases the visibility of a website on top of a search engine page under paid marketing. SEO is more trustworthy than SEM results. SEO is a long term strategy while SEM gives instant results.

There are different ways to optimize the site for SEO and SEM. Depending on the marketing objective, it is important to understand if one should go for SEO, SEM or both.
Business should have a budget for search. It's like a blue ocean strategy which adds value for future growth.
It is better to have your SEO agency work along with you starting from website development as they can share inputs on website design, content placement, keywords to be used and coding. Content building and keywords are two very important aspects of search engine optimization. On the other hand, SEM is about identifying the most appropriate keywords and betting on them to get maximum traffic.
Digital marketing is not a one time activity but a continuous process of improvement and optimization. The lifeline of a website is very short unless you put in effort to keep it alive through continuous enhancements.

Responsive Web Design vs Separate Mobile Site

More and more people now access a website through a mobile and hence, it is important to enhance the user experience on a mobile devise. It is important to ensure that a visitor gets what he is looking for while browsing the site on a mobile and not just leave the site since the user experience is not good and he needs to zoom in to read the content.
The idea is to make your site mobile optimized.
You have two options - to go for Responsive Web Design or to create a separate mobile site. There is no right or wrong between the two options. It depends on your requirements. At the same time, you need to understand both the options before you can make an informed decision.
In a laymans language, a Responsive Web Design (RWD) ensures that your mobile site is the same as your website with the content re-arranged to fit the mobile screen size. Hence, the URL to access a mobile site is the same as website URL. The code is the same as website and all you need is to maintain one site to ensure data consistency. The disadvantage is that it doesnt give you flexibility to enhance user experience of your site for a mobile user. You might want to cut short the content or remove some features or change the design.
The second option is to go for separate mobile site. It is different from a website but if a user access the website link on a mobile site, he will be redirected to mobile site link. The user experience can be enhanced by keeping only relevant information for the user.

Parameters	Responsive Web Design	Separate Mobile Site
Content	Same content and features as website re-arranged to fit the mobile screen.	Allows different content and features on mobile site and website.
Data consistency	Need to manage only one site - website. Mobile site will be updated on it own.	Need to manage two sites separately.
SEO Campaigns	One site, one SEO campaign. Need to maintain only one SEO campaign.	Two sites, two SEO campaigns. Ability to optimize the mobile site for mobile keywords.
User Experience	Same on Mobile site and Website. No surprises when moving from one to another.	Different experience on mobile site and website. Dedicated and Focussed experience for mobile users.
Code base	Shares the same code base as the desktop site.	The codes are separate for website and mobile site.
URL management	One URL for both website and mobile site.	Different URLs for website and mobile sites. Mobile URL if typed in a browser on a laptop view will open the mobile site display.
Devise Detection	Every link that’s shared is a link to our full site and mobile site. No redirection required.	Devise detection and redirection required to direct a user to mobile site on a mobile devise.
Load Time	Load time reduces as there is no redirection in case of RWD. Load time increases if we put all pages from website to mobile site.	Load time increases when a site is redirected to a mobile site. Load time reduces if the number of pages are less as compared to website.

Questions to ask before you go digital!

You want to create digital presence for your Business. What are the questions to ask before you make a decision:
What is my Business Objective from going Digital.
Who is my target audience.
What is happening in the Digital market.
What is the Digital medium to achieve my Business objective.
What is the lifespan of my digital medium.
How do I support my digital initiatives.

Conversation demo:
A: I want to build a website.
B: Why?
A: To increase awareness about the product.
B: Firstly, mere existence of a website doesn't ensure that it increases awareness about your product. Don't think website, think digital strategy which is all inclusive. Secondly, define your business objective clearly.
A: My business objective is to target 10,000 visitors to my website.
B: What will you achieve by targeting 10k visitors if they don't stay for more than a minute on your website. Define your Business objective and then think of a medium.
A: ok. I want to increase my Business by 10% over next one year.
B: Bingo! Now you think how you want to do it.
A: I want to do it by developing a website.
B: why website, why not  facebook page or a mobile application or just advertising online. Do your research and see what's happening in the market. What is the digital presence of your target users and
A: I observed that there are many people who are interested in the solution to their say travel problems and there are very limited websites which provides information on the basis of budget.
B: So we go website way. Do you want the website to provide one way information or you want to engage your visitors so they keep coming back.
A; Engage.
B: then we think of the content to be put on the website and the design.What do you plan to do after your website is ready.
A; I dont know.
B: You need to market your website in the digital world. This happens only after you define your target audience. Once you define, there are many ways. The best way is word of mouth , its effective but limited. Then you go for online advertising. Then comes Search Engine optimization through SEO or SEM.
A: hmm
B: It is important to remember your budget and do cost benefit analysis to know which medium suits your requirements the most and provides maximum benefit. Technology is changing at a fast pace. Keep updated, think fast and execute faster.

WWW

Its a World Wide Web with lots of information floating around. Now information doesn't make sense, the information needs to be relevant and for that the source needs to be trustworthy.
A person has two lives now - a virtual presence on digital world in form of his facebook/ linked/ twitter profile and another his real identity. You meet some people virtually and some in real. Both identities exist independent of each other. One may die and other may survive. This world give importance to both and judge you in both ways. There is no escape from the digital world if you want to succeed. Hence, it is important not just for individuals but for organizations.
An organization is run through careful communication and technology is a medium of communication. It is important to understand the entire life cycle. In this life cycle it is important to understand where you stand and where you want to be and how you can reach there. This blog is about the HOW part of it!