Digital Marketing Strategy

Outsourcing work overseas is a challenge many start ups and online retailers face. These days however, it has become much easier to find overseas professionals with readily available marketplace platforms, like odesk, guru, elance and many more.

But managing a person or team overseas is definitely not a walk in the park, and there have been countless horror stories of overseas outsourcing gone wrong. Speaking from experience I have created a list of important things to consider when outsourcing projects overseas.

Here are my 15 tips to consider when outsourcing work overseas:

1. Clearly scope out and schedule your project and define deliverables

Be very clear on the scope of your project; define your project requirements so that service providers know exactly what the deliverables are and when are the scheduled deadlines. For some service providers you have to literally spell it out, as they will do the absolute minimum based on the project scope.

2. Be very “Choosy” when hiring

Be very picky when you are hiring, there are many service providers out there, so you don’t need to be in a rush. Also don’t choose a service provider based solely on price, look at other aspects as well and choose based on a balance of good value and quality results.

3. Look for the right experience fit

Make sure the service provider specialises in what you need them to do, and make sure they have specific experience with the type of project you want them to complete. A lot of service providers will be able to do many tasks, but will specialise in none.

4. Review rating, statistics and feedback

When choosing a service provider it is important to review all the statistical information that is available on their marketplace platform. Most of the platforms will show their work history, how many hours they have worked, what tests they have taken, and any feedback from previous clients.

5. Review portfolios and sample work

Ask the service provider to provide you with a portfolio of work they have done previously, or get them to do some sample work to show that they actually do have expertise in that area. This will ensure they have the right skills to compete the project tasks.

6. Arrange a call or SKYPE interview

It is always best to talk to someone face to face before you employ them, but it’s not so easy if they are in a different country. Thanks to SKYPE you can easily have a face to face discussion with them to make sure they are who they say they are, and gauge how effective they will be at communication and handling the project.

7. Have payment based on clearly defined milestones

Define your scope into a plan with defined milestones and base payment on the completion of each milestone. Always pay by hour rather than by project, this will ensure that the project isn’t rushed and ensures quality.

8. Test a few providers, before you make your selection

Don’t rush to hire a service provider and stick with them the whole way. Start interviewing a few candidates and give them small portions of work to test them out and pick the best out of the lot. Also do not sign a 1 year contract before testing out the relationship and their performance. Start small and commit gradually.

9. Have everything documented in writing

Make sure you have everything documented and in writing. Be clear on who owns the resulting work and make sure there is an understanding from both parties on the intended use of the deliverables. Also keep a written record of project goals, pay schedules and any changes made.

10. Make sure you have an NDA signed

It is very important to have an NDA (non disclosure agreement) signed by both parties, especially if the provider has access to sensitive company information, that could be used in an unethical way. Any refusal to sign an NDA should be a sign of bad things to come.

11. Have a support clause ready

Many companies forget to prepare a support clause when they hire someone for a project. This is especially important when hiring for projects that involve expertise that the company does not have internally.  So drafting a support clause will ensure you get continuing support from the provider even after the project has been complete.

12. Have a review schedule with status updates

Make sure that you are constantly updated with the status of the project, it is important to always be in the loop of what is happening with the project’s process. A good way to do this is by having regular SKYPE calls, while also having a status update policy.

13.  Plan a clear exit strategy

Outsourcing projects is a risky business, and having successfully hired a service provider does not mean that the project will be a success. It always good to have an exit strategy just in-case any issues arise during the project. Always have in writing the terms of the contract and consequence if any part of the project is not completed as agreed.

14. Treat your employees as team members

To get the best out of your service providers,  treat them as team members. Get to know them personally and work for win – win outcomes, because if you find someone good, you will want to keep them for the long term.

15. Give honest feedback on how well the job was done

Finally give praise and appreciation when a job is well done, and give good written feedback. If a job is not done well, give the appropriate feedback, as other companies looking to use them in the future will find this feedback very useful.

On the internet you can find tons of articles that describe various tricks and tips on how to increase the number of your followers. Additionally lots of companies have created software and services that can help you automate the procedure. Even if some of those programs and techniques work in some cases, it is highly recommended not to base a social media campaign on unethical or spammy techniques because it can heavily affect the image of your company.


In this article we will focus on well-tested whitehat techniques that can be used in order to increase the number of your followers. I stress that these are not some magic tricks that will increase your followers in one day. These are techniques that can help you on the long-run increase the number of your followers, maintain them and build a loyal target audience.

1. Be an active user

If you want to increase your followers make sure you post regularly and send most of your tweets during the rash hours when most people are online.

2. Place social media buttons in your blog

If are an active blogger you should place social media buttons on a strategic position of your blog. Have in mind that usually the best position is on the top of the article, near the title. Additionally it is highly recommended to use the standardized buttons that people know and trust. Finally it is recommended to use buttons that allow your readers see how many shares a particular post has. This encourages them to share it with their followers.

3. Add a twitter banner on your website

Adding a “follow me” twitter banner on a visible area of your site can help you attract more users. Also it is always a good idea to add your social media profiles in your Contact page. Some people might find it easier to contact you through these channels rather than sending you an email.

4. Add your twitter account in your email signature

This encourages the people that contact you via email, to find you on other social networks. Adding also your other social media profiles like LinkedIn and Facebook can be a great way to increase your business connections.

5. Add your twitter username in your business card

It is a similar to the above technique that can help you increase the number of followers from your industry.

6. Use hashtags

Twitter uses hashtags to group together tweets or add additional info about a message. Even if you can create your own tags, it is generally recommended to use the popular ones. Note that for every topic, industry or event the community uses lots of different hashtags. Here are some examples: #SEO #socialmedia #hotels #success #fail #followfriday etc.

7. Participate on #FollowFriday

Every Friday twitters recommend other interesting users to their followers. Make sure you recommend other important persons to the people that connect with you. In many cases you will see that they will do the same for you. The 2 most popular hashtags about Follow Friday are the #ff and #followfriday.

8. Interact with other people

If you want to be popular on any social network you must interact with other people. Discuss, provide feedback, retweet the messages that you find useful, ask and reply questions. Don’t forget that the main target of social networks is to socialize with others, not to promote your company.

9. Update your bio, image and Background

Adding accurate bio and information in your profile can help other people find you and follow you. Selecting an appropriate profile image and background can help you also show to the users that you are a professional. Don’t forget that first impressions are very important.

10. Follow people with similar interests

Twitter is a great place to find new e-friends, exchange ideas and participate on discussions. By socializing with other people you will not only increase your followers but also be able to influence other twitters.

11. Send quality tweets

Sharing quality content and messages with your followers is extremely important in order to become popular. By sharing your views, news, trends, quotes, links and websites that you found useful, you can increase your followers and become influential user.

12. Don’t send 140 char twitter messages

People usually give credit to the original author, when they Retweet (RT) a message. Many times they choose not to use the RT button because they want to add their comments. By sending messages shorter than 140 you give the chance to other people to give credit to you by placing your username in the post or to add their comments. This can help you generate conversation and increase your followers.

13. Add yourself in Twitter directories

There are a lot of twitter directories where people can find other users with similar interests. Note that not all of them are worth using, but there are few such as WeFollow that receive lots of traffic.

14. Conduct a contest

As we saw on a previous Social Media Case Study, conducting contests on social networks can help you increase your brand awareness, your followers and the traffic of your site.

15. Connect your Facebook profile with Twitter

There are lots of applications that can help you connect your Facebook or LinkedIn profile with Twitter. In this way you can post the same messages to all the people that connect with you on the various social networks and increase your total connections.

16. Use your twitter profile when commenting on Blogs

When you post a comment on a blog, it is a good practice to add your twitter profile as a link. This can help you start conversation with the authors and increase your followers.

17. Mention and Thank the people that help you

When people RT, mention or help you, make sure you thank them. Not only this is the proper thing to do, but also they will appreciate it and they will continue supporting you.

18. Don’t Spam, Be honest and transparent

If you start spamming your followers they will unfollow you and you will ruin your reputation. Keep in mind that honest and transparent behaviour can help you not only increase your followers and keep the ones that you have, but also make a good name for yourself.

19. Create a list of useful tweets

As we said above it is important to tweet often and send quality messages. Due to the fact that you can’t be on Twitter 24/7 or you might not have always something useful to send, you can create a list of interesting topics, tips, techniques, articles and references and use them when you are stack. This list can contain useful information about your industry, tutorials, how-to articles and references to your blog.

20. Use Twitterfeed or similar services

TwitterFeed and similar services or programs can help you automate your tweets, connect your blog with Twitter & Facebook and schedule your future messages. Those services can increase your followers because they can help you tweet more often. Nevertheless remember that those services should not replace you on social media and that you should remain an active user.

Google is well more than a search engine these days, but what else it is exactly is often hard to define – unless you hone in on a specific service. One industry targeted by several Google products and services is the local industry. As part of expanding their local-oriented services, Google is currently testing a service known as “Offers.” Offers bears a striking resemblance to Groupon, the daily deal site, but offers some unique advantages and is integrated with select Google services. Previously tested in only in Portland, Offers is now expanding to both New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area.

These releases are far from unexpected: in previous releases of Google Offers, a drop-down menu that allowed you to select yourlocation showed a “coming soon” message next to New York City and San Francisco. We can use this to see what areas will be getting Google Offers in the near future: Boston, Austin, Denver, Seattle, and Washington D.C. are all showing a “coming soon” status.

Each site provides a daily deal, the option to save specific local deals for future redemption, and a connection to Google Places to find out more about local businesses. Additionally, these pages seem to be indexed by Google’s own search engine, meaning they can be found through the SERP. It’s also been confirmed that features are coming for Google AdWords that allow local businesses to showcase coupons or deals that are hosted in Google Offers.

The gradual rollout is proceeding fairly quickly, but still has a long way to go to catch up to Groupon, the undisputed industry leader. While Google has now launched in three cities, Groupon is present in around 400.

Google previously released an authorship markup that lets content creators claim the articles they’ve written. This markup is being taken a step further with an experiment that showcases the author in the search results page.

The Authorship Spotlight Experiment

The rel=”author” tag, introduced earlier this month, was presumed to be mostly a preventative measure against the scraper issues that remained prominent in a post-Panda world. That may still be a core reason for rel=”author”, but it’s certainly not the only purpose of the tag. Google has started an experiment that boldly spotlights the authors of content around the web.

As you can see from the image above, the author’s picture and name are displayed to the right of the SERP result. Both are clickable, and direct users to the Google Profile of the author.

“We’re piloting this new search experience with a small sample of authors who have linked their Google profile with their content,” according to the official Inside Search blog entry announcing the feature. “It’s anticipated that author pages located on the domains where content is shared will also receive support in the future.”

Trust, Social, and a New Form of Browsing

While authors will absolutely love this new feature (it’s exposure, and we melt for exposure!), users and Google itself both benefit. By being able to see the author of any piece of content, users will gain a new level of trust that the content is high calibre. Google, in the meantime, is giving those more trusted results; it’s an effective way to tag their content without having to invest in manual curation.

It’s also highly social for Google. The profiles of the authors will become more prominent, and will themselves become a hub for exploring the web. Users who like the content from an author can use the Google Profile to find other content they might enjoy.

Additionally, this new form of browsing increases the importance of a long-term relationship between content creators and their readers, pushing for quality over quantity.

Rob D. Young,

Google has launched a new attempt at social networking as it again tries to challenge Facebook in the wildly popular and lucrative internet market.

Google hopes to snare a slice of the lucrative social networking market

This time the project is called Google+ and it aims to make online sharing more like real life and less technologically restrictive.

“We think people communicate in very rich ways,” Google senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said.

“The online tools we have to choose from give us very rigid services.”

The company hopes it can improve social networks’ selective sharing within small groups to make them more like real world communications, and unlike online where many acquaintances are labelled “friends”.

Google Circles allows users to sub-divide groups of friends

It says many Facebook users find it difficult to limit their status updates to small groups of people so their co-workers are not exposed to party photos, or their parents are not privy to flirtatious posts on their wall.

Though Facebook has tried to address this with a much-hyped Groups feature, it is not clear how many people use it and now faces “Facebook fatigue” in some markets.

Mr Gundotra’s criticism seems aimed squarely at Facebook, the world’s largest online social network that has become synonymous with online sharing since it began seven years ago.

In response, Facebook said in a statement: “We’re in the early days of making the web more social, and there are opportunities for innovation everywhere.”

Google, which dominates internet searching, has been experimenting with different social tools since 2009 with limited success.

Google Buzz was one major mishap. The product was a social network attached to its popular Gmail service but it wound up exposing email contacts that users did not want to share.

The company eventually agreed to submit to independent audits of its privacy controls every other year for the next two decades as part of a US watchdog settlement.

Google shut down another attempt at online sharing, Google Wave, last August after unveiling it with much fanfare in 2009.

Facebook has started to reach saturation in certain markets

Google+ lets users share things with smaller groups of people through a feature called Circles.

The concept works on the basis that only select sub-groups, such as university mates or favourite work colleagues, can see photos or posted links.

Another feature called Sparks aims to make it easier to find online content you care about, be it news about football or cocktail recipes.

These can then be shared with friends who might be interested in it and is called “nerding out” by Google.

There is also a group messaging service called Huddle and a feature that lets users instantly upload photos that they take with mobile phones.

Google has previously launched an integrated TV concept

“I think Facebook is going to have to up its game,” Altimeter Group analyst Charlene Li said about the new challenge.

But others were more sceptical about the Google challenge.

Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst with research firm eMarketer, said users already have their socialising set.

She said: “Asking them to create another social circle is challenging.”

“The whole idea of a Google social network… they’ve been throwing stuff against the wall for several years and so forth nothing has stuck.”

Google+ is being launched warily in a “field trial,” so it is accessible by invitation only – the company declined to say when it would be more widely available.

Ben Crawford is the CEO of domain industry firm CentralNic. Prior to joining that firm in 2009, Crawford worked at various jobs which combined his love of sports with Internet technology, including serving as executive producer for IBM’s official Sydney Olympic Games website.

The final barrier to a new era for the Internet was lifted Monday morning, when the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted 13 to 3 in favor of introducing new top-level domains (TLDs) to compete with .com, .net, .org and country codes like .ca and .mx.

The vote, held in Singapore before a thousand-strong audience of tech insiders and broadcast live online, was met with a standing ovation. A core deliverable of ICANN since its inception, new TLDs have been the subject of six years of intense debate contributing to ICANN’s bottom-up approach to policy making. As one board member put it, “every imaginable aspect has been examined six ways from Sunday.”

A hundred potential applicants have gone public over those years with their ambitions to acquire new top level domains. These range from cities like .paris and .nyc, to brands like .canon and .hitachi, to verticals like .gay and .ski. Hundreds more have kept their plans secret, particularly due to the uncertainty that previously clouded the topic.

Why the need for these new TLDs? ICANN’s mission includes introducing more consumer choice — a blessing for everyone frustrated with finding that the ideal domain name for their new project is unavailable at the existing extensions.

For trademark owners, acquiring their own TLD creates a completely brand-safe online zone free from phishing, domain spoofing, knock-off sites, counterfeiting, and the gamut of other damaging activities that plague the Internet. Plus, a .brand TLD gives marketers the choice of any domain they want ending with their trademark. No matter what name you come up with for your new product or promotion, with your own .brand, the domain is available.

A More Equitable Internet

On a global scale, the need for new TLDs derives from the drive for an altogether greater good — a more equitable Internet. Regional communities such as the Galicians in Spain, the Venetians in Italy and the Kurds in Iraq have been active in asserting their need for domains that reflect their languages and cultures.

Moreover, recent developments will permit new TLDs to be in characters other than ASCII text (the letters and numbers on English-language keyboards). These new top level domains will usher in a true globalization of the Internet, with URL support in Chinese, Japanese, Cyrillic, Arabic, and dozens of other scripts.

Supporting the view that the public wants new top level domains are the recent successes of “repurposed country codes” like .co (officially the TLD for Colombia, but sold as an abbreviation for “company”) and .me (officially for Montenegro, sold for “unique personal brands”) as well as new SLDs (second level domains) like us.org in the United States and .com.de, about to be launched in Germany.

Opposition

There are of course opponents to new TLDs. Complaints about the cost (an $185,000 application fee plus the cost of producing a 200-odd page application, plus the set-up and running costs) have been responded to by ICANN with the announcement of a $2 million grant program designated for applicants from developing countries. But the main objections actually come from major brands that already spend hundreds of thousands of dollars registering domains “defensively” to prevent others from using them, and which are concerned that a proliferation of new domains will cause these costs to escalate vastly with no added benefits.

ICANN has sought to mitigate this risk by introducing far more stringent protections for trademark owners than those that exist under the current generic TLDs, including a system that allows the rapid takedown of domains that abuse trademarks.

The Process

The timetable announced for the introduction of the new top level domains starts immediately with the preparation of complex application documents. As running a TLD involves taking responsibility for core infrastructure of the Internet, specialist technical providers are required to support each new TLD, and the applications must include comprehensive and fully-funded business plans and detailed policy documents governing the rules for usage of the new domains. The application window is between January and April 2012, and the applications are scrutinized by ICANN and then made public, so that objections from any quarter may be heard before the domain is granted.

The earliest we are likely to see one of these new TLDs in our search engine results is early 2013.

For new TLDs that are contested — for instance where multiple applicants apply for the same or similar domains — assuming all applications are of equal merit, the domain will be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder. As premium dot com domains occasionally sell for millions of dollars, we can expect these bidding wars to reach tens of millions of dollars. Toys ‘R’ Us paid $5.1 million for the domain toys.com in 2009. What does that mean for the value of .toys?

Google introduced a new feature available in your Google Dashboard called Me on the Web. It’s officially announced purpose is to “help understand and manage what people see when they search for you on Google.”

Google suggests this tool will help make it easier to monitor your identity on the Web and consider this a next step in providing options to protect your identity.

Offering assistance for setting up search alerts, managing your online identity and helping you remove unwanted content, this service sounds altruistic enough. With the recommendation Google recently gave suggesting web content authors use rel=author and rel=me attributes, this announcement seems like a natural follow-up idea.  However, the new Dashboard section is merely links to how-to’s help articles and different interface to Google Alerts, which are not new.

The second step to managing your identity, according to Google’s help topic, is to create a Google profile. In fact, if you don’t have a Google profile, you can’t use “Me on the Web,” because it reports information you entered on your Google profile. 

From Facebook-like profiles to their +1 button, it’s no secret that Google has ambitions of being more social. Getting a profile is the first step. And Google is trying every reason to get people to sign up for one.

What’s your take? Do you have a profile? Is this useful? Is it altruistic or merely a rouse by Google to get more profile signups? Let us know in the comments below.

A new social network that aims to be a Facebook alternative for children between the ages of 8 and 13 is launching on Tuesday. Schools, brands and investors are already on board.

The network, Everloop, operates much like Facebook (virtual currency, photo albums and games included), but requires verified parental permission to join. Parents can also select which of their child’s actions on the site they would like to be notified about, and have the option to restrict features like IM and friend suggestions. All activity on the site is monitored by the company to prevent inappropriate behavior.

These key features make Everloop compatible with The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which prohibits websites from collecting information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent. Most tweens bypass this law on other social networks by simply lying about their birthdays. Schools, on the other hand, generally block social networks like Facebook and Twitter for the same reasons that unsupervised public platforms make some parents of tweens nervous.

Because it is COPPA-compliant, Everloop can be used in schools. In April, a partnership with Internet safety education program i-Safe will bring the platform into about 56,000 schools. I-Safe will incorporate a white-label version of the network into its curriculum in order to demonstrate social media skills (and get parents to sign over permission to use Everloop sites in the process).

Everloop is not restricting itself to schools as other child-safe social networks like Edmodo have. Nor is it ignoring brands that are clamoring for the attention of its demographic. The network has already partnered with virtual concert site Planet Cazmo and other children’s brands that are eager to share their content on a platform that kids already go to rather than build one of their own. Branded goods, such as stickers that children can use to decorate profile pages, are also in the works.

This business model has persuaded vFormation and other angel investors to put $2.5 million into the company. But will the platform persuade kids to move from Facebook to Everloop?

While various national news stories have made it clear that Facebook isn’t age appropriate for tweens, its also clear that the line between “age appropriate” and “not cool” is delicate. Everloop argues that the content on their site will be more appealing to children than content designed for adults on other social networks. (FarmVille for sixth graders?) The company has been successful with pitches to investors and partners, but convincing tweens to make the site their online home base might be its toughest sell yet.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, pixdeluxe Sarah Kessler

After all the talk, Google’s +1 button is now officially here. In a low-key blog post, Google simply announced that the button has launched with a handful of web properties, comprised of the usual suspects. 

Google is letting people add +1 buttons to their own sites. Webmasters can get all the info on the code by visiting Google’s +1 button code generator page. The code is straightforward for nearly all Webmasters, comprising a JavaScript include for your “head” and a matched set of tags where your want the +1 button to appear in your docuement body.

Ways to Set the Button Up

Currently, there are few options:

When adding the button you have your choice of four sizes ranging from 15 pixels to 60 pixels tall, set the language annotations will appear in, and the option to display (or not) a counter indicating the number of +1s your page has received.

For advanced Webmasters, you may also specify callback functions in the form of a JSON object. You can also pass a URL to the +1 button code. This is especially useful for bloggers who want to put the +1 button in their list of recent posts or category pages. By default, the +1 button uses the URL of the page it is on. By passing a different URL, you can +1 a page using a button on a completely different page. Twitter’s Tweet button allows this functionality, too.

Do You Really Need it?

Aside from yet another social button by which to share, what does this mean for you and your Web site? Although you would not know it from the low-key announcement, this is Google’s most important push towards social search, with so much riding on it that Larry Page has made a bonus plan for Google employees.

Annotations will now be seen by people you (and others) are connected to via Google. However, Google has yet to prove that +1s will have the same far-reaching impact that Facebook likes currently offer.

However, a close reading reveals that Android Market, YouTube, Blogger and Product Search will all see +1 buttons arriving soon. This has the potential to be a game-changer as it will be the first time that user data is really exchanged between these properties. In particular, Android Market definitely stands to successfully differentiate itself against the Apple AppStore – which has no means to bookmark apps or recommend them to friends, even via iTunes Ping.

New Data Nuggets

Web analytics may not necessarily need another metric but +1 button promises to help measure engagement. Official details on what data will stream from Google’s +1 button are not available yet, but Jim Prosser from Google confirmed that “we’re bringing data to Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and AdWords frontend soon”.

Nontheless, there are methods of tracking +1s to your pages. By writing your own Javascript function, you can track +1 clicks as a Google Analytics event using _gaq.push() and use GA’s standard reporting functionality.  All-in-all, the +1 button will now become another micro-conversion that may provide insight to how your site is performing and how users are engaging with your content.

There’s a button war going on around us. Google, Digg, Yahoo, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn — they’ve all been angling to get their buttons in prime real estate on big websites. But two players loom larger in the space than anyone else: Facebook and Twitter. And Twitter just escalated the war a bit today.

Twitter has just unveiled the Follow Button. This follows their Tweet Button which is already in use on thousands of websites across the web. While the Tweet Button was great for sharing individual pieces of content, the Follow Button is meant to establish more social connections on the service. In this regard, it’s sort of like the Facebook Like Button, which people place on their websites to get other Facebook users to tie themselves to brands remotely. Of course, the Like Button also acts a bit like the Tweet Button as well (that is, you can share individual pieces of content from it too).

Confused yet?

Twitter’s dual-button concept is actually pretty simple. The Tweet Button is to share stuff. The Follow Button is to establish connections with other Twitter users remotely. So if we were to add a Follow Button to the sidebar on TechCrunch, with one click, you could follow our account. This is something Twitter has tried to do a bit with the Tweet Button pop-up (you can have it show the affiliated site account, for example), but this is a lot easier to understand. Though it also seems like this is a part of what they were doing with @anywhere — whatever happened to that anyway?

And again, it’s all a part of Twitter’s movement towards a stronger social graph with more connections. This will also help with discovery since Twitter is launching the Follow Button on over 50 high-profile sites including places like our sister sites AOL.com, About.me, and Huffington Post. And big sites like IMDb, MTV.com, Lady Gaga’s site, Jennifer Lopez’s site, and others.