“Addiction – The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.”

That is the definition of the word addiction. Apart from narcotics, it has been used to describe the obsession that people develop for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But is this really true? Do people really get so fixated on a website that it can be called an addiction? And if this is really the case, is it a good thing or a bad one? There are a lot of people out there who seem to be condemning these sites, saying the younger generation spends less time studying now because of them or that the time spent on these sites is a waste in general.

But no matter what people complain about and how much they complain, the fact of the matter is that these sites are here and they are here to stay. They will probably be a more advanced and developed form of the same sites in a few years, but they will still be here because the web evolving as a social platform is what it was ultimately destined to be. This is what our human nature demands. It was inevitable that we become social even in the comfort of our own homes.

So, going back to the first question, are these social media sites an addiction or are people who are not used to change overreacting? It might seem like an easy question but the answer will depend on your own perspective on the situation. Which means the question is a simple one to answer but it is too diverse and personal. Some will complain about its supposed ill effects but all that talk will mostly come to nothing in the end. The reason for that is this – there will always be someone who opposes the new ‘toy’ and at the same time, some who cannot resist it. The latter being the majority of the population, (or lets say the part of the population with the louder voice on the web), the end of social media becomes impossible.

I personally believe that it is for the good of society as a whole. Communication is developing at an increasingly fast pace and social media has suddenly taken the lead and taking us to a whole new level. Take Google Wave for example and don’t think about the fear of monopoly for a moment. It is quite an achievement. Of course it is the next obvious step to merge IM chat, e-mail, wiki, etc. within one single platform, but you and I did not predict it, it just looks obvious now that we’re looking back.

So my point is, (and I’m sorry if I dint’ make it too clear at the beginning) that no matter what field the progress is in, there will always be opposition, (although it is very important to have a few cynics around to keep our heads in balance). But you must also remember that progress will come no matter how much you try to stop it, and things will change.

If you are reading this you probably agree with me. If you don’t, feel free to convince me otherwise! Leave a comment…

As you’ve probably noticed, we at Pragmites Consulting are currently revamping our company blog. From what started with just a handful of employees headed by Prakash and Gaurav Gurbaxani, it has now grown into a healthy company of 20+ employees. This company initially started in 2007, providing marketing services to local clients in Pune. With time and experience we now provide a host of Internet marketing services such as search engine optimization (SEO), social media optimization (SMO), search engine marketing (PPC), and website design to offshore clients. We’ve decided to give a new look to our blog and start sharing our experience by regularly posting on our blog each week. Our blog posts are written by various employees from Pragmites to give you a personal account of our thoughts, philosophies, work trends and discoveries from the Internet marketing world.

(source: http://www.savagechickens.com/)

We decided to reveal our first hand experience of setting up our company blog in this post, to give others an idea of how to create an ideal company blog. People should understand what a crucial building block a blog can be for companies who want to build traffic for their website and expose their brand online. In my opinion, a company deciding to have a blog is like rolling over and offering their vulnerable underbelly to their consumers. It’s a chance for companies to loosen their neckties and show their personal side in a professional atmosphere. That can either work for you or against you depending on how you use your blog.

It is important to keep in mind these tips when writing a company blog, to ensure it doesn’t backfire against your company image.

1. Posting regularly is a must. You can’t create hype around your company by starting a blog, gaining readers and visitors and then let it fizzle out. Make sure you’re providing something substantial to your readers on a regular basis, to give them a reason to visit. Don’t copy other posts you find on the Internet. Discussing similar topics is understandable but make sure you personalize it and make it your own. If you have to discuss something you found on someone else’s blog, make sure you give them their due credit.
2. Never use the blog to snub another brand or company. True, a blog is a place for one to jot down their true feelings, thoughts and opinions. However, you have to keep in mind that EVERYONE will be reading your blog. Your competitors, previous customers, prospective customers, business partners and investors all can read it, so it’s important to maintain a certain sense of responsibility regarding the material you put on your blog.
3. Have entertaining material. A blog can be a platform to showcase interesting videos, field advice, pictures, updates, theories in your line of work, breaking industry news, and much more. People should take away the idea that you are up to date in your field of work and are under a constant state of research and development when it comes to working. Impress people by showing that you’re on top of your game!
4. Don’t ramble on when writing a post. People get bored by long drawn out write-ups easily. So try and keep your posts on the shorter side. Limit your posts to around 500 to 700 words per entry. It helps to have colorful imagery incorporated throughout your post. For example, if you are explaining in your post how to use a program it would be recommended to include snapshots to make it easier for readers to understand what you’re writing about. It also gives a clean and attractive look to your posts when you are able to break your paragraphs with interesting images related to your write up.
5. Use grammatically correct English. Just because this is a personal aspect of your company, doesn’t mean you can forego all the usual literal parameters. Sure, you can give your blog post a casual touch by delving in a heart-to-heart write up for your consumers and clients. But make sure you have grammatically correct sentences and proper diction.
6. Don’t take undue advantage of stuffing as many keywords as possible in your blog posts. Sure you can do that if you want. But users will see through this façade and stop visiting your company blog when they realize you’re not keeping their interests in mind.
7. Be careful when promising something on your blog postings. There are a lot of companies that choose to utilize their blogs to reveal product release dates.  If you don’t end up fulfilling those promises it will look pretty irresponsible on your company’s part.
8. Make sure the look of your blog correlates with your company website. Having a one theme for your company blog and another for your company website looks very amateur and disorderly. Logos and company colors, should be similar throughout both the websites so visitors can identify with your brand easily. You should host your blog on your domain.
9. Ensure your blog has the option for visitors to leave comments and feedback. This is crucial to your blog, as it gives you the opportunity to directly communicate with your consumers. Consumers will feel they can relate to your brand if their voices are being heard and can address their concerns.
10. Install Google Analytics to track down how many visitors you had each day. This will give you an idea of how company blogging is working for you. You will be able to review the effect of the enhancements or changes you make on your blog to see what does and doesn’t work for your company blog.

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Lately, a lot of businesses worldwide have realised the advantages of ranking well on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. A typical company with a modest marketing budget would consider either hiring a professional SEO or starting a Pay-Per-Click campaign.

The first option (the cheaper of the two) involves a dedicated effort of at least a few weeks(or months if the keyword is competitive), after which your website’s rankings for key phrases start rising. The second option, PPC, can give you instant results and ROI, depending on your budget and the keyword competitiveness. But what do smaller business like mom and pop stores do? How would they get a piece of the pie? The answer is Local Business Listings. These are listings that show up when locally targeted keywords are searched for, and are displayed above the organic search results, like so:

Google Search Result Page

With listings so predominant, it would be a crime not to take advantage of this, especially if you can do it for FREE. All you need to do for your business to show up is-

1) Create a Google account

2) Login to Google Local Business Center

3) Fill in all the information

4) Complete the verification process

The whole process does not take more than 15 minutes to complete and your listing starts showing up within a day or two. Quite an easy way to get traffic to your website wouldn’t you say? Not really. There are literally 100’s such listings that you will compete with, especially if you are located in the city.

So how do you rise above the others? Here are a bunch of tips that can help increase your chances of ranking well on Local Listings:

1) Fill out your business listing comprehensively- Put in all the information you can about your business. All your phone numbers, images of your shop/office, videos(if you have any), payments modes accepted and any other additional specifics.

2) Correct the location marker- Once you put in your address, Google dynamically places a placemarker on the map. If the location is not precise, you can manually correct it. This is more so that people looking for your location are able to spot you precisely(Imagine if a customer turns up at the wrong location! That’s one prospective customer lost.)

3) Provide proper categories- Make sure that the categories that you list your business under are a precise as possible. Once you start typing within the box , you’ll get a list of suggested categories, which are usually the most popular ones. Entering these as products/services you offer will increase the chances of your listing showing up, since these are terms that people actually search for.

4) Include your product/service in your business title- For example, “Joe Friday’s” could be changed to “Joe Friday’s Plumbing Services”. This will highlight the service- “Plumbing Services” and will increase your click-through rate.

5) Get customers to review you- Google generates reviews from popular websites like TrueLocal, CitySearch, TripAdvisor, InsiderPages and so on. Requesting your clients to rate you based on their experiences is a good idea. This will help increase your credibility of your business and convince prospects to contact you.

6) Offer Coupons- Adding an incentive though coupons for visitors through the Local Listing will increase your enquiries and help keep your listing active. Remember- search engines love businesses that are active on the web.

Keeping these few points in mind could really prove to be a golden duck for your business, especially when click-through-rates for these listings are comparable to an exceptional PPC Campaign!

There are a lot of people giving advice on how to increase your following on Twitter. They have articles, websites and some even have an application that they claim will help. I actually came across a few that try to sell these products to new comers. I have gone through a lot of them and I am sure many of you will agree that they do not work. Sure, they sometimes have great advice and ideas. But mostly they DO NOT WORK – (Please correct me if I am wrong here and point me to an article or website that actually has been proven to help. Leave the details in the comments section below).

The problem is that many people, who are new to Twitter, are excited by all the hype surrounding it and will invest in the above mentioned ideas to drive traffic to their websites. Maybe some of them have actually worked in the past but my guess is that something else contributed to the success. It would probably be the quality and quantity of tweets. Either way my point is this – it is unwise to follow an idea without understanding why it will work, or rather how it will work.

When I first started my account on Twitter, I was completely confused. I read many articles, some very expertly written and others that were actually quite silly and obvious. I watched tutorials and read notes. I speculate that out of all the information that I accessed to further my understanding of Twitter, only 10% was useful. But what did help me, was the fact that I sat logged in to Twitter for hours on end, reading other people’s tweets and clicking randomly.

My Twitter account was actually created a while back and I had been ignoring it, but when I did start to pay attention to it, my numbers suddenly increased. Believe me, I was stuck on 800 or so followers and after my efforts this has been steadily increasing and now it is up to around 1500. This is not a huge number, I know, but considering the time it took to increase, I would say it is considerable.

So what did I do? Well like I said, I started to pay more attention to my account. I followed and unfollowed. I checked other application sites for Twitter and found some really good ones. I weighed the pros and cons of different types of tweets that one can post – this is quite interesting actually and depending on what you are using your account for, can be very important. I looked around at other people’s accounts – those with thousands of followers and those with just a few. I retweeted to an acceptable degree (over doing it will do more harm as you would look like a spammer), and I even used the trending topics in my tweets. All these things are what I believe did the work. It does take time, yes, but it is also the only thing that is closest to a guarantee of success.

I hope I have made some sense in the above. I wrote this so that people are not being misled into believing that there are quick formulae to success, because there aren’t. It takes hard work, trial and many mistakes to get it right.

If this has been helpful please let me know. Good luck and if you need any advice be sure to ask.

Need help with Twitter? Check these links -

http://pragmites.com/blog/2009/06/04/a-walk-through-twitter/

http://pragmites.com/blog/tag/twitter-basics/

Update: we have received a tremendous response to this article. Evidently we are ranking extremely well with the search engines. If you are a Doctor or Medical Professional we would happy to service your website and ensure that you receive top rankings as well. Please do use the contact form below and we will be prompt in responding to your requirements.

For a complete understanding of our services, please do visit our corporate website.

Telephone operators either put you on hold for 20 minutes or you get transferred into a never ending call queue. People you talk to, usually have a limited amount of time and information they can give you up front. Books and pamphlets don’t usually paint the whole picture and often give only one perspective on a particular subject matter. So it’s no wonder that people prefer to use the Internet to get exactly the information they need. Approximately 63 million Americans are using the Internet today, just to find healthcare information. With that in mind, I’m not surprised with the number of health care providers who want to tap into the SEO market and evolve with the latest marketing trends.

It has become essential for medical practitioners to be accessible on the Internet in order to accumulate new leads and create a stronghold list of patients. Medical SEO is the marketing strategy in which search engine optimization and medical information is combined to attract users who are looking for medical care and those from the healthcare industry. This marketing strategy is ideal for doctors and other health care providers for its ability to target medical related traffic. No other market can allow you to target such a specific audience with users browsing the internet, unaware of your doing so.

The field of medicine progresses in such drastic leaps and bounds on a day to day basis, that it is necessary to keep patients and medical professionals updated and informed through the Internet. Healthcare is a necessity in all of our lives to remain functional and healthy and most are prepared to travel long distances to get the best medical practitioner in the market. With so many patients ready to travel the distance to get the healthcare they need, the Internet allows medical practitioners to provide these patients with crucial information for the ailments that they suffer from.

A number of patients lack good doctors nearby and suffer from rare diseases or medical conditions that can only be cured by a handful of doctors. Medical SEO has allowed doctors and their information to be readily available to those who are suffering and find a solution to their ailments. Medical SEO provides doctors a platform to be in touch with their patients to provide professional medical advice and enable them to view their options before visiting their clinic. Doctors are able to give their patients as much information they need so that they can feel comfortable before undergoing surgeries and other medical procedures.

Because of Medical SEO, doctors can now provide their patients with videos, blogs, stories, patient testimonials, photographs, and a lot more detailed information then they could ever get from one visit to the doctor! When you visit the doctor, you usually have a limited amount of time scheduled with the doctor where you can speak to him ask the questions you need answers to. Viewing his website will give you as much information you need and you can spend as much time as you want! Ever try calling the doctor’s office just for one question and had an annoying nurse tell you that the doctor is not available to speak to you? Well those days are gone. With websites for medical practitioners most websites have the option to get in touch with the doctor by email to ask any questions you have and they will either call you or email you back with an answer.

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The first thing you must do is to register.

1. Go to http://www.twitter.com and click on “Get Started – Join!”.

2. You come to a page which says “Join the conversation”. Just fill the form that follows.

3. After this is done, you have the choice to invite your friends from your different mailing accounts by clicking on the respective links. You can just skip this step and complete it later if you prefer.

4. The next page you find yourself in, has the heading “Look who else is here. Start following them!” This page gives you a list of popular people on Twitter that you can choose to follow. You can skip this page too if you like, but it is advisable to follow people that you are a fan of or just interested in. It becomes a part of your personality as people often judge you on who you are following.

5. After you select “Finish” or “Skip” your account is created.

Now that you have your account ready, you have to complete your profile. Go to the settings link on the top right hand side of the page.

The following is a list of all the important things to complete on the different tabs on this page -

1. Account – Enter your website/blog URL. This will direct your followers to check your website/blog. The next important step is to complete your bio. Your bio has to be friendly and should say something about your job profile along with an interesting detail about your personal life. This information will be viewable to anyone who visits your page, so make sure you complete it. The end of this tab has a check box. Only check it if you wish to keep your account private.

2. Password – You can change your password regularly for extra security.

3. Devices – This tab helps you to connect your account to your phone. You can get regular updates and nudges by selecting the relative check boxes in the Notices tab.

4. Notices – This tab helps to keep you updated.

5. Picture – Upload your picture on this tab. A friendly photograph of yourself is best, unless you wish to use your company logo.

6. Design – You can change your account appearance by changing the background image and also the design colors.

If you have any other questions, you should look through the Help section on the top right hand side of the page. Everything you need to know is mentioned here along with useful tips.