Arun Nair has published an interesting bit on how to use Social Media as a medium for disaster relief…
Excerpt:
“Social media has also been very resourceful in mobilizing funds instantly for the cause. Fund raising applications have sprung all across Facebook which has helped in gathering hundreds of millions of $ in contributions. According to Randi Zuckerberg, who manages non-profit initiatives for Facebook “People have contributed thousands of dollars through the Causes application on Facebook… Groups including the American Red Cross, Oxfam America and Partners in Health have mobilised supporters through their Facebook pages and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last 24 hours alone.”
Read the full article:
http://www.indianeye.org/2010/02/02/social-media-as-a-medium-for-disaster-relief/

Here’re some general guidelines/tips to be kept in mind while writing blog posts for our client blogs
1. Keep yourself in the shoes of a reader, find out how the post is going to be interesting/useful/informative to the reader. A plain article can be boring-try to make it interesting/useful using your creativity.
2. Never plagiarize. Both content and images should be our own. If a 3rd party image is used, due credit should be given by mentioning source of the photo
3. Do check for spell/grammar errors-Get it peer reviewed by other team members
4. Focus on 2-3 keywords on each article. Ensure that this keyword repeats several times throughout the article (instead of writing “it is a good place to stay” write “XYZ is a good place to stay”
5 be careful while being judgmental. Avoid writing “govt has done nothing regarding this” (you’ll need strong proof/justifications if you’re making such statements. Instead, mention …

While there is a lot of hype around Social Media, it is essential to clear the fog and set right expectations:
Social media can not do magic overnight. -It takes a decent time to build a credible identity online and then leverage it for any business/personal benefits.
Social media success can not be purchased- While anyone with money can buy a print/tv ad which is guaranteed to catch some eyeballs, success of a social media campaign largely depends on passion, involvement and commitment by the people concerned. Online Janta is very smart and can quickly identify what is genuine and what is fake. It takes some genuine efforts to build trust and fanfare online.
Social media needs involvement: While external agencies can help with technical aspects, strategy and execution, effectiveness of social media campaign will be good only if clients get involved. Since new media is more personal than professional, making someone else …

If you’re a doctor or engineer or a teacher or a lawyer, it is easy to explain your profession to others as everyone has a good idea what these professionals do.
Now, if you’re in social media field-either making a living out of it or pursuing it as a hobby, how do you describe your profession to your friends, relatives and potential in-laws?
Anand , A kerala based social media professional, shares his experience in this post.
Anand is an internet marketing consultant at Ayruz and defines his job as
An internet marketer to me is someone who
1. can drive traffic using the internet and digital means. Search Engines, paid ads or Social Media, its all about the traffic.
2. ability to convert that traffic into leads. By leads, it can be a sale, a newsletter signup or even a click on your Adsense.
What do you think of this? What’s your idea of a …