Factors to Consider When Choosing an Outsourcing Destination

Thinking of finally improving your business by taking advantage of the benefits of outsourcing?  It is an attractive strategy for businesses but it is not an easy process. Outsourcing will require a great deal of decision making and thorough planning. Aside from costs, there are three other factors that you should consider before sealing the deal with your chosen outsourcing company.

1. Quality of Service

Quality is probably the next big thing to consider after costs. As they say, you get what you pay for. The cost may be cheap but quality should not be sacrificed. The decision in this case may be influenced by choosing which tasks to outsource. If an outsourcing company has an abundance of skilled workers in a field that your company lacks, might as well grab the deal for that task.

2. Communication and Culture

This factor can be a big deal breaker in choosing your outsourcing partner. Not only does this mean their ability to speak English, but also how the culture can affect the client- provider relationship. Nobody wants to offend anyone specially in the business world. When it comes to difference in language make sure your documents instructions, and even manuals come in clear and easy to understand. Information can easily get lost in translation and that can pose a serious problem in the entire workflow.

3. Company Dynamics

Look around. Do the employees look happy to be working in the outsourcing company? The air may be filled with negative vibes and that can be a red flag. A good company has excellent teamwork, employees who smile and a leader who motivates his team.

Be sure to get feedback from other clients the company has worked with, if possible. Things may look bright and cheery on the outside but there may be hidden skeletons somewhere. Outsourcing is an investment as well so better be sure to put your money on the best possible business partner.

Outsourcing solves the need to control and reduce cost. When carried out properly and done with the right outsourcing company, your business will reap the benefits greatly. Look at the top countries for outsourcing and weigh the pros and cons before signing the deal. Find the right people to deliver real solutions to help you grow your business.

Eastvantage | IT Outsourcing | Offshoring Services

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How To Increase Facebook Reach & Engagement

Below are tips quoted from SMXblog post.

In essence, effective Facebook marketing requires close attention to data and analytics, but also a diligent focus on reaching fans through authentic, relevant content of value. 

1. Statistical takeaways from Tami Dalley, Sr. Director of Analytics and Insight for theSalesforce Marketing Cloud 

• Be active on the weekend. Interaction rates peak on Saturday and Sunday – the same time when posts from brands are less frequent. If you don’t want to work on the weekend, use one of the available tools to preschedule posts.
• Time content for when fans are more likely to see it. Higher interaction rates occur from 8pm to 7am, not during the work day.  Note: Be aware, however, that the best day and time interaction rates can differ by industry.
• Posting 1-2 times a day (not more) creates a 19% higher interaction rate. But posting more than 7 times a week creates a 25% decrease in interaction rate. So what should you do? Identify the days of the week where you get the highest interaction and focus on those days.
• Be concise! Posts with 80 characters or less have a 23% higher interaction rate. 
• Use clear calls to action. For example: “share this” or “like this”. Posts with clear calls to action have a 48% higher interaction rate.
• Visual content increases interaction rates. Surprisingly photos receive higher interaction rates than videos.
• Tweak the words on your post according to your goals.
• Inquire! Questions can drive a 92% higher comment rate. Also use “caption this” and “fill in the blank” posts do drive commenting.
• Use short - but real - URLs (like bingads.com/advertise) to ensure greater click-though. They drive higher interaction than shortened bit.ly URLs that don’t reveal context.
• Emoticons attract.  Research shows emoticons drive a 52% higher interaction rate- as long as you don’t over do it. There’s even data about which emoticon is most effective (see photo below)

2. Content promotion and management tips from Annalise Kaylor, Director of Social Media at Intrapromote

• Don’t compare yourself to others (too much). The activities of your competitors isn’t always relevant to you in the social media universe.  For example, most of us aren’t directly competing with other companies on Facebook as much as with the varied content in your fans’ friend feed. Comparing your engagement to that of other brands is overrated.
• Provide value!  Ask yourself how your customer wants to interact with you and what they are interested in knowing now. Tell a relevant story and don’t try to game the Facebook algorithm. If you provide value to your fans, the algorithm will “like” you.
• Twitter is public, Facebook is personal.  Aggressively selling will turn views away, who don’t hesitate to “unlike” you or (at best), hide your updates. Facebook is a personal space you don’t want to intrude upon. Remember, “if you want to sit between my grandma and my best friend then provide value to me.”

Source: bing Ads Community Blogs and Forums

Eastvantage | IT Offshoring | Outsourcing Company

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Search Without SERPs: The Future of SEO?

Yesterday was Google's 10th anniversary, and I thought it would be a good time to write about something I've been thinking about a lot lately: the humble SERP. Even as Google reinvented how pages were ranked and changed the SEO game forever, the search engine results page (SERP) remained virtually the same. Consider this search result from Lycos, circa 1996 (courtesy of the Internet Archive):

Looks pretty familiar, doesn't it? It's only been the past couple of years where we've begun to see the evolution of the SERPs, an evolution which seems to recently be accelerating. Even putting aside advertising, such as Google's mind-bogglingly profitable AdWords program, search results have started to become customized, personalized, segmented, and have even begun to leave the SERPs altogether.

Enhanced SERPS

This first step in this evolution was search enhancement, when search engines began to add customized features to the SERPs to supplement the basic text results. I'll briefy discuss two, Google OneBox and Google Suggest.

Google OneBox

Back in 2006, Google started experimenting with the OneBox, an area at the top of the SERPs that contained customized information for certain kinds of queries, such as movie showtimes and stock quotes. Probably most notably, OneBox revolutionized the landscape for local search, providing integrated local business listings with Google Maps.

Pardon the large image, but it really serves to illustrate how much SERP real-estate the OneBox consumes and just how fundamentally it changed the game for searchers and search marketers in certain niches.

Google Suggest

Recently, Google rolled out Google Suggest, a pop-up menu that suggests alternative search queries while you type. For example, when I typed in "chicago pizza" on the Google home-page, I saw this:

While Google Suggest still seems like a work in progress, what's notable about it is that it potentially bypasses the first round of SERPs entirely, redirecting a searcher from one set of results to another without even seeing the original listings.

Search Without SERPs

Recent advancements go far beyond SERP enhancement, though. Lately, with technological advances in mobile devices and a resurgence in competition in the browser market, we're starting to see alternatives to the traditional search results.

Mobile Maps – iPhone

I'm a recent iPhone convert - I'll spare you the gory details, but one selling point for me was the integration of GPS. The iPhone 3G comes with a customized Google Maps application with built-in search, but instead of traditional SERPs, you get something more akin to the OneBox map:

Unlike the OneBox, though, the traditional SERP is completely gone, replaced with an interactive map based on your current location. This is obviously useful to end-users, but it changes the game completely for local businesses. If your business isn't ranking for local searches, an iPhone user probably won't find it, even if you rank well on traditional SERPs.

Direct Queries – Ubiquity

Mozilla Labs, creators of the Firefox browser, recently released Ubiquity, a tool for entering simple, customized text queries. For instance, if I call up the Ubiquity plug-in and type "map chicago pizza", I get a search preview:

Once again, results seem to be pulling from the Google Maps/OneBox data, but just as with the iPhone map, Ubiquity has completely circumvented the traditional SERPs.

Implications for SEO

As search marketers, it's hard not to be a little worried by these recent changes - as a group, these advancements are undeniably game-changers and represent a significant learning curve. The important thing to remember, though, is that this evolution is not only good for users, it can be good for clients if we're willing to adapt. SEO is a young field that is destined to break into niches and specialties, and how you best guide searchers to information will depend more and more on your clients and target industries.

Source: http://www.usereffect.com

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