In our last blog we discussed e-commerce and the types of e-commerce. It

Commerce refers to all types of activities related to the sales and purchasing of services or goods. E-commerce (Electronic Commerce) can be explained as a type of commercial transaction which is done through a computer, commerce enabled software and networks. In other words, E-commerce is a business transaction that takes place between companies and their customers. It is a process that has been and continues to change the way we buy and sell products.

Methods of electronic commerce

B2C (Business-to-Consumer)
Business-to-Consumer is a transaction that occurs between a company and a consumer, as opposed to a transaction between companies (called B2B). The term may also describe a company that provides services, information and/or products for consumers.

C2B (Consumer-to-Business)
A consumer posts his project with a set budget online and within hours companies review the consumer’s requirements and bid on the project. The consumer reviews the bids and selects the company that will complete the project.

C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer)
Consumer-to-Consumer refers to the buying and selling of goods and services, and the transfer of funds through digital communications between consumers. This includes free classifieds, auctions, and forums where individuals can buy and sell with the help of online payment systems like PayPal. One of the supreme examples of C2C is eBay’s auction service.

B2B (Business-to-Business)
Business-to-business describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. The volume of B2B transactions is much higher than the volume of B2C transactions

G2B (Government-to-business)
Government-to-Business is the online non-commercial interaction between local and central government and the commercial business sector, rather than private individuals i.e. government-to consumer.

In the current economic scenario Electronic commerce can prove to be a boon but one thing that you need to understand before entering the world of online business is that there are over ten million websites that are E-commerce. This means that you have tough competition, and if you want to be on top among them, you will have use the right strategy and try to reach as many customers as possible.

Every presentation on social media or every panel, in every conference around the country and every city this question comes up. How do you measure ROI on social media?

There are quite a few ways to measure this. First, sales. Have you noticed an increase in your sales after your have started your social media strategy? That’s usually the first concern of all businesses small or large – the bottom dollar. For example, recently, Old Spice ran a video campaign with the “Old Spice Guy” on YouTube where they answered questions from fans, and the newest stats show that the sales increased 106% since the start of the video campaign.

Second option is to monitor how many hits your sites receives. This may be the best option for tracking ROI because what this means is that you are achieving brand awareness. And good advertising and marketing always lead to strong brand awareness and then sales. You can do this easily by putting Google Analytics on your website or blog. It creates a comprehensive report of all unique visitors, return visitors, hits, and other variables like best times of day, days of the week, etc.

Another way to check your ROI is if you are creating content via a blog or twitter, are people retweeting your messages and are they commenting on your posts? If they are doing this then you’re brand is being circulated around and it can be counted. Numbers are not always the most important when it comes to how to evaluate a social media strategy.

All in all, your ROI should start to pick up some speed after a few months and each campaign is different. Give it time to grow, and snowball. Small businesses may take more time than national brands.

By now everyone has heard about the Old Spice commercials. The Old Spice Guy has been around for awhile as a kind of hit sensation that people love to watch, but Proctor and Gamble took it to a whole new level this week. If you’ve been trying to figure out a way to make social media work for you, or wondering how it could work for anyone, well, look no further than Old Spice.

Last week, ex-football player Isaiah Mustafa appeared in videos on youtube aimed at specific users. He would create a video in answer to someone’s question on line.

“The Old Spice strategy makes brilliant use of social media,” said Augie Ray, an analyst with market research firm Forrester. “The response has been terrific. Social networks are buzzing. Video resharing has been very high, and the Old Spice YouTube channel now has 75 million total upload views. And this effort shows evidence of going even more viral.”

Basically this creative account demonstrated how to make viral videos. They should be whimsical, funny, short, and incorporate the ideas of your fanbase. Most of the videos actually didn’t display the product at all. They were stemmed from a successful ad campaign that was developed over time. A viral video doesn’t go viral on day 1. It takes a little bit of time to work its way into the public eye, and then it needs to be followed up on. In this case they created these videos and put out there that all you had to do, was have an interesting question for this leading man in a towel.

These videos utilized a number of video experts to produce 150 questions over the course of two days. This meant that a lot of control had to be given up by the powers that be in order for creativity to remain the most important aspect. Fans noticed this, and appreciated the effort and made it a successful campaign. Take note!

Did you know that today, June 30th is World Wide Social Media Day?

No? Well don’t worry. It was the first one and it was coined not much more than a month or two ago by Mashable. Mashable is a social media guru’s internet bible. It is fully of blogs, articles, posts, about anything and everything social media. It is the epicenter of social media news, as well as information on the hottest topics – such as the new Apple iPhone 4 or the Droid, and reports on anything major happening in the world of technology.

So what is Social Media day? Mashable created this day in order to give people a chance to meet up and introduce themselves in real life, or to reconnect and network. In over 600 cities – big and small – domestic and international – people got together for a few hours after work and mingled. Some of the best networking can come from a general meet up with people you’ve already been interacting with. And the best part about Social Media Day is that if you’re not following someone, but one of your other twitter friends is, then you have an automatic introduction.

A lot of people on twitter work in similar fields. Primarily marketing, public relations, sales, and IT people congregate on line in certain communities and a day like this helps to bridge the gaps. It is one of the best ways to network and create collaborations and projects because you’re already familiar with some of the things people are already up to. And if for nothing else, you’ve created some excellent friends this way and it’s a perfect time to kick back, relax, have a beer, and enjoy the new relationships you probably wouldn’t have made if it weren’t for Social Media.

We won’t know til tomorrow if this was a success by Mashable’s standards, but it’s probably a safe bet. Use meetup.com to find more meet ups in your area. The hope of Mashable was to create one meeting a month in various areas. Take a look! And if there isn’t one in your area – it is really easy to start your own! Good Luck!

Creativity. Some people have it, some people don

Regardless of the type of business you have, your presence needs to be online. You now know that you need your SEO to be up to par and whenever anyone searches for you on Google, you must be one of the first page results. You also should know by now that you cannot in any way shape or form pay Google to have this done, so now you must solely rely on keywords to get you where you want to be. But where do you start?

Well, in any good online marketing plan your website first must be excellent. That goes without saying because it acts as your homebase, and a functional, well thought out page will make or break your whole initiative. But then what?

Well there’s Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, You Tube, just to start and a dozen other places that your business probably fits into. Get yourself a Facebook fan page first. It’s an easy enough service to set up that you can plug in your information and start a small Facebook ad campaign to amass some people to “Like” your product. Simply update a status everyday to remain relevant, and as a bare minimum.

And/Or go to Twitter. Twitter is NOT a place for you to advertise. It is a place for you to connect with your customers or clients and build relationships. Think of it as a sophisticated customer service center. It’s a place where you can monitor what’s being said about your company or industry. Interact… do NOT send automated messages.

LinkedIn is for your professional base. Create a company page – add a career page tab onto your career profile to enhance it and add videos of corporate culture, or to talk about your employees doing excellent work. The key to LinkedIn is joining and participating in groups.

YouTube is an excellent place to post your videos – especially if you have any kind of How-To’s involved in what you do. YouTube needs to be broadcast to other platforms though, so make sure your presence is already set up and functioning elsewhere.

So your website might be the first place to go, but you must follow up everywhere else. And make sure to search out those niche sites that will be oh so important to you!

The biggest buzz words in any professional circle today are “Social Media.” What is it? How do you use it? If you have Facebook/Twitter is that it? How do you know if it’s working? Who’s supposed to do it? — It becomes a giant mess when companies start to think it through. It is really hard to resist the urge of speaking directly with your client base. They have feedback that you desperately want, and it’s right there for the taking.

Or is it?

Many companies today are creating social media policies and strategies thinking they know what they’re doing once they’ve read a few articles. The problem being is you cannot just fall into social media marketing. It is like anything else – needs to be studied and carefully constructed for the optimal results.

There are two people that are needed to pull of an excellent social media strategy: the Social Media Strategist and the Community Manager. The Strategist is the overall brain stormer, the one who makes things happen in the big picture with all of the technical aspects of the project. The Community Manager sits in house and connects with the community. The CM will act as the project manager, the online marketing director, customer services, sales, event planner, and face of the brand. This person will be full time social media in your company and put your brand everywhere it will go. They must be a jack of all trades and master of social media and networking.

Together, these two people will acheive your goals in every aspect. They will NOT just use facebook and twitter to get your brand across. That is only 3% of what they’re job is.

If you are not ready to pull the trigger on a full blown initiative, you are not ready to tackle it on your own. Sit down with a consultant first to take inventory of your business, your current talent, and where you’d like to see your business in a year or two. This might included a strategist and a community manager, and it might just mean having your customer service share one account to interact with people.

Think it through with various people and departments. Don’t just get a facebook fan page and twitter account and think your job is done. Consult professionals!

You’ve done all the necessary components for getting your web presence up and running. You’ve created a twitter account, a Facebook fan page, you remodeled and branded your website, and wrote a blog. You keep checking Google to see where your business ends up when you type in Keywords, but it just won’t climb and get onto that first page. Now what?

Google will never accept money in order to put your product or search item higher on the ranking list when someone performs a search. Working with Google’s search engine means you have to prove to them that you’re worth having a high ranking.

There are a few things you can do. If you remodeled your website on your own, pay a company who specializes in web re-design to help you, or at least give a quick consultation on the things that you could do better to draw in customers. If you are up and running on all the social media networks, dedicate various members of your marketing team to be in charge of the specific areas. One of the best things you can do, is hire a Community Manager. This person sits as a part of your marketing staff, and their entire job is to do online marketing. They will coordinate your efforts, live, eat, and breathe your brand, and put your name out into the world. They will interact with your customers and THAT is how you become more SEO friendly.

Social Media is a conversation that happens on line. Keywords are flung around everyday, and the ones that are used most often are the ones that Google rewards with high rankings in their search engine. In order to achieve this, you must be active in your community and participate in daily goings on with your customers.

Facebook serves over 400 million users worldwide, and a good portion of that are ACTIVE users. It is a market just waiting to be utilized, but do you know how to harness its power?

First, you need a Facebook fan page (that goes without saying). Its very easy to set up… just go to any fan page you know and on the bottom left side there’s a “Create a Page for My Business” and it sets everything up for you.

Second, it needs to be tended to, maintained, and nurtured in order to grow and become useful and credible.

How do you do that? Well, it’s easy really. Brand your business – know your audience. Deliver daily status updates regarding news articles and tips that focus on your product and your industry. Use the tabs provided to showcase contests, polls, videos, or any other kind of interactive media.

The trick is to keep it updated and have it grow organically. One of the best ways to give it a little kickstart though, is just take out on of the ads that Facebook offers. They’re inexpensive, and you can pay-per-click or pay-per-impressions.

And then watch your market come to you.