Why Mobile Marketing is important for your business!

This Video is having some interesting statistic content on Mobile Marketing with Smartphones. The animation, music, and the style of presentation is awesome for the content. It explains about why mobile marketing and mobile websites are important for your business. 

Smartphone Security - An Essential Guide

Smartphone security from Muthu Kumar

6 success tips for business from your websites

[caption id="attachment_813" align="aligncenter" width="432"] 6 success tips for business from your websites[/caption]

The first thing is – a happy birthday to Internet. Yes, today is the 30^th birthday for Internet.

Internet Websites are an essential element for modern business days. It can be a personal, organization, product specific or sometimes service specific. A website is not just HTML information on internet, but it is a brand value of you / your company or your product / service. Many websites even act as online sales points through its e-commerce channels. A strategic report from investornews, pcworld and hubspot says that approx 571 new websites are created every minute throughout the world around us.

Well, do you have your website for personal brand promotion or to promote the brand value of your organization?  How do you reach international customers to create an awareness of your product /service? In my study, many non-IT Smallbiz and enterprises are having websites but those are just HTML pages. I see this scenario in many IT startups too.  The point is the website is live, but it is not active to its audience. It always provides some static information from their business catalogs, and images from their photo gallery.

4^th Week of Dec 2012 - I participated in a group discussion with Smallbiz owners. Some of them are from IT startups too. I presented a strategy model for them to create / improve their websites and active information management. The goal of the strategy is to increase the brand value and improve the business transactions through their website. I would like to share some of the important points from our discussion here.

#1: Simple Website: The website should be simple. It means it should be understandable to any kind of visitor. Simple navigations, and easily understandable icons / photos / information diagrams can increase the readability of content. Use Color wheel theories to understand the minimal usage of colors, and site-map model to build navigations. The content should be updated regularly.

#2: Fast Loading: The fast loading website gets more attention from users. I always suggest avoiding flash and shockwave content in business websites. It is required only in specific sections for example:  a workflow demo of your ERP product. JQuery is good for simple web slideshows, photo galleries and UI designs. JQuery loads fast, provides impressive results with its new versions now days. Similarly HTML5, AJAX and other JavaScript frameworks helps improving performance of websites.

#3: Understand your visitors: Analytics is the best way, to do a reach on visitors and their actions. Google Analytics is the free one available, but there are many paid analytics systems to help us – some of them are not costly. Every website should be connected with an analytics engine to capture visitor activities. It required very less programming knowledge to integrate an analytics engine, but to evaluate the results from analytics engine, you need a strategist. A strategist can guide you about content planning, goal setting, bounce rate management and visitor count management.

#4: Connect with World: Social Media is an active marketing space in India from 2010 – but very fewer companies are utilizing it for business brand promotions. Facebook, YouTube and Blogs should be connected with your website to create more visibility. The URL of the website should be promoted though Social Media channels with every post and campaign.  Create engagement programs through social media and guide the users to website for more details: for example – to download an eBook or watch a video. Search Engine Promotions are also required – you can use free plug-ins available to download. A strategist can help you to build promotion strategies and insights analytics.

#5: Think about Mobile: Approx 30%* of visitors use their mobile devices/smartphone to browse internet now days. If your website is not responsive, it may not show content in expected way. Make sure, the website works for all required mobile device resolutions, and changes its shape accordingly. There are many free validation tools available to test the website with various resolutions. The alternative idea is to create a sub-domain for mobile users [m.yoursite.com] and redirect them to it via a small code script. Mobile website development needs some frameworks to build fast loading and content delivery – for example Wordpress for Mobile-sites. A strategist can help you to build technically qualified mobile version of website.

#6: Build a small web-store: E-commerce is for selling products / services online. But a web store can provide something even for free [for example: EBooks, PPT, PDF files etc]. Let the content be relevant to your products / services [example: manuals, learning books etc]. It creates a reason for visitors to increase their frequency every time. Talk about your updates in social channels to improve awareness. Take the suggestions from a strategist for more ideas.

I hope the above mentioned points are useful to you too. If you have questions and suggestions – please communicate with me.

UX – the strategy for successful mobile solutions

[caption id="attachment_804" align="aligncenter" width="432"] UX – the strategy for successful mobile solutions[/caption]

“Mobile is the new face of Engagement” says Ted Schadler and John McCarthy, in their White Paper on ‘How enterprise mobile systems are going to empower customers and employees with context-aware apps’.  They estimate, by 2016, Smartphones and tablets will put power in the pockets of a billion global consumers. I am seeing wide range of articles and discussions on Enterprise mobility management, Enterprise Content access and collaboration solutions, and also on mobilizing UCC (Unified Communications and Collaborations) with Mobile Office Development.

It clearly shows the extensive range of opportunities for Mobile solutions development, and numerous start-up companies already started to work on cutting edge technologies to provide solutions.

As a part of my strategist profession, I also do reviews of many beta versions of such solutions; and I found a surprising gap between the requirement and solutions. It is nothing but End-User-Experience. The majority of the Mobile solutions are developed to solve the functional requirements of a business cases, but unfortunately they are missing the User Experience part of it.

[caption id="attachment_805" align="aligncenter" width="700"] The User Experience wheel [Image Courtesy: Diego Lago][/caption]Well, what is User Experience? Wikipedia says “User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership, but it also includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system.”

Being a mentor to many mobile development teams, I strongly suggest developers to use basic standards of User Experience in their solutions. Most of developers do ‘Coding’- and they think that’s all their job is. In my cases, I involve the developers in UI design phase too. They should understand at least the basics of clickable parts of the app, the application navigation from the end-user point of view, searchable content design, styling the UI components and visual feedbacks. In one of the recent discussion with an android app development team, I explained how they can design apps with multi-device compatibility using UI factors – which is an important strategy to reach more users.

The best User Experience makes the application user friendly, and it improves the usage of the application compare to other similar apps for same purposes. The User Experience is a business strategy too for impressing many users.  The organizations should focus to train their developers on User Experience through their designers or though a design expert. This cross functional training will definitely help in improving quality standards of mobile solutions.

Well, share your thoughts friends.

How foursquare can help branding?

[caption id="attachment_798" align="aligncenter" width="432"] How foursquare can help branding?[/caption]

I am using foursquare. I use it in every important place I check-in. It may be offices, client places, public meeting places, vacation sports, restaurants, shopping spots, business seminars and sometimes even on the way to a relaxing location in weekends. One of my business clients noted and followed all my check-ins in foursquare [Thanks to Facebook Activities] and showed interest about it. He wanted to understand how this tiny app can be used for his Smallbiz brand promotion. Well, it’s an opportunity for me too – by explaining about personal branding and Smallbiz branding strategies.

Let me share few key points I discussed, and I am sure this will be useful for any personal branding and Smallbiz branding practices.

I am using the status message of foursquare check-in to mention about my business services mostly. For example: if I am in a client place for UI design assignment, I ‘Check-in’ and put status as “Working on UI Design of a brand new mobile application here”  - that messages helps me to advertise my services in all foursquare connected social networks too (mainly Facebook). Friends & Friend of Friends notice it, and through that I get more business connections.

I create places in foursquare, and I frequently check-in to those places. I post photos of that place, advertise information about that place (well, free of cost) – and that makes me the “MAYOR”. The Mayor badge is not having any special benefit from foursquare (looking for some impressive offers J), but It helps me to access the management of that place and introduce myself, mention about how I am promoting their place and services. Many times, I received positive feedbacks – and this improves my connection strength high. Of course I get official discounts too along with business opportunities.

Promoting “YOU” as a brand is very important in social media – for various purposes. What is your life-style, what you do, what you like, what you say – everything is having a meaning in social media. It improves followers and friends. It improves your personal and business value [For ex: Robin Sharma – my Guru]. Foursquare is a way to track our business / personal activities and share a thought though it. Remember – your brand value is your value in business and now days, it is also your personal value.

So, that’s about it. The recent good news is, today morning I got a new opportunity to build a personal branding website for the client and that will be used to display his social activities too.

Mobile Marketing – The Analysis for Strategy

[caption id="attachment_787" align="aligncenter" width="432"] Mobile Marketing - The Analysis for Strategy[/caption]

Couple of weeks before, I was invited by a team of well-known marketing management company in Coimbatore, for a discussion on Mobile marketing strategies. The mobile marketing is not a new buzz word anymore, because there are many business teams started to build success stories in metro markets.

We discussed about all available opportunities to reach the target crowd through mobile marketing – based on various constraints, and content styles. I suggested them a strategy which was cost effective – at the same time, can produce a measurable response. I would like to share some points; we came across in the discussion – to give an idea about how mobile marketing can help you in business marketing services.

The important understanding required about Mobile Marketing is ‘understanding the attitude’ of Mobile Users. We referred some study reports before finalizing the strategy, and we found some interesting facts. Almost 65% of smartphone owners are interested in receiving offers, deals in their phone. 15% of users are interested in upgrade plans, top-up discounts etc from their mobile operator. Nearly 50% of users are fine to receive mobile advertisements and offers from third parties [shopping, entertainment, education and life style].

The next question is – the advertisement should be in Mobile Internet or in Mobile Apps? You are right – Mobile Internet is the preferred choice for many users whereas SMS is still dominating the mobile marketing business, along with email, twitter DM etc.

My suggestion to mobile marketing professionals is understand the attitude before you build content. Plan the frequency of advertisement delivery and track the responses every time. Build different channels to track responses, it can be the number of replies, hit-rate of a website, number of purchases in e-commerce or even visitor count with token number from advertisement.

Let’s discuss more about this in coming days – meantime, share your points and questions with me.

How to be a Specialist in Technology

[caption id="attachment_781" align="aligncenter" width="432" caption="Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist"][/caption]

The Indian Information Technology (IT) industry always respects the professional certificates – even though the candidate is having experience and knowledge in his respective technical domain.  There are many professionals I see around me, are having brilliant knowledge in technical domains, especially in Microsoft technologies. There are designers, programmers, administrators and many – while discussing with them, I found that, they have very good knowledge to become a professional and improve their career values, but not having an idea about it.

So, what should be the next step – from a career strategist point of view? Well, go for a certification in your technical sphere of influence – right, but what to choose! I suggest starting with Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Certificate.

If the candidate is having one or more years of experience, and knowledge in implementing, troubleshooting, and debugging a specific technology – the small medium size enterprise owners should push the candidates to go for a certification – because, it not only improves the career value of candidate, but also the business value of SME.

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist certifications are for Windows Operating System, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Project and Project Server, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and even for Microsoft Biztalk and Microsoft Dynamics.

“Earning a Microsoft Certification validates your proven experience and knowledge in using Microsoft products and solutions. Designed to be relevant in today's rapidly changing IT marketplace, Microsoft Certifications help you utilize evolving technologies, fine-tune your troubleshooting skills, and improve your job satisfaction” – says Microsoft.

So, what makes you waiting? Start your career in right path with an industry standard certification to prove your knowledge values to the world around you.

All the best dear friends

Top 12 Knowledge Requirements for 2012

[caption id="attachment_728" align="aligncenter" width="432" caption="Top 12 Knowledge Requirements for 2012"][/caption]

2011 gave a very powerful positive impact on specialized business life for Social Media and Smart Phone Professionals - many new Gadgets, Applications, Job Profiles, Start-ups and Success Stories.

2012 – Definitely, is coming with lot more new opportunities for IT communities.

Well, what is essential for your success in 2012 – Let’s take a quick look on top knowledge requirements.

• Mobile Application Programming – It is not just Android, Windows Phone and IOS Programming. Look into HTML5, CSS3, Advance Java-script, JSON, JQuery and PHP. Mobile WEB Frameworks are going to be an excellent option for “Develop Once-Deploy to All” Concept.


• Customized Agile Project Management – Agile is still not professionally implemented in many organizations. Most of the Small and Medium size companies are using it as simplified version of traditional project management – but in the name of Agile. Certified Scrum Master and Agile Scrum Trainings for your Project Team are essential for a success with quality.


• Location Based Services – There are very few applications with Location based Content Identification as a feature and most of them are just social and Infotainment. There are lot more requirements which can be fulfilled with LBS – for Example: Tourism, Education etc.


• Data Center / Networking Technologies- The demand for networking professionals is high with virtualization and cloud computing projects. Virtualization and the Cloud could also be behind the increased need for IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration.


• Smartphone Security – Smartphones are becoming part of corporate network elements now days and security for official and personal data becomes major question. Data Security Applications, Anti-virus Tools, Remote Content Management, Policies for using Smartphones are high in requirement.


• User Interface Design – UI Design and Development is an important presentation layer element, which decides the success of many Smartphone and Tablets apps, and also PC and WEB Apps. There are certification course available to educate you about best practices and standards and it is a hot item in job market too.


• Mobile Commerce / Payment – Smartphones and Feature phones are fully capable for Money Management now days with Applications from various vendors. There were few banking apps, mobile malls and payment apps showed success stories last year, and I am expecting more to come in 2012.


•  Context Aware Applications – A new technology provides improved user experiences by using the information about a person's interests, intentions, history, environment, activities, schedule, priorities, connections and preferences to anticipate their needs and proactively serve up the most appropriate content, product or service.


• Gaming Smartphones, Devices – estimated to $800 million business, it provides numerous opportunities for business owners and technical professionals.


• Help Desk/Technical Support–Mobile operating systems have added a new dimension to help desk and tech support community and this will improve a lot in future.


• Business Intelligence – from Cost saving to investing in Technology, I am expecting many new prospects with BI.  There are certifications, Business Analysis best practices to improve it.


• Life with Open Source – Open source is not just limited to PHP and MYSQL, but there are more useful, free to use, efficient platforms for developers, designers, project managers, analysts, testers, business owners and general IT end-users.

I wish you all the best in this New Year 2012 for many new success stories, career improvements and business values.

How to Promote HR in Social Media Marketing

[caption id="attachment_677" align="aligncenter" width="432" caption="HR in Social Media Networks"][/caption]

Human Resource is a business area, which always needs continuities interactions with individual candidates, groups, communities and Small/Medium/Corporate groups. The style of communication in various channels decides the greatest number in its business growth. Recently, I met a Client, who works for a renowned HR unit at Bangalore, for HR Portal Development and Social Media Strategy support services. Our meeting touched various success points as goals and strategy plans, in-fact I learned few ideas from him. I am sharing few simple ideas here, for any Human resource development businesses – which are into hiring, training, resource development, placements and management.

• Publish the available opportunities as small text notes in facebook, twitter, likedin and other common social networks. People need information about opportunities to get prepared for the same.


• Publish small notes about the current and future opportunity market trends, required technologies, knowledge base for opportunities. For example: Candidates should know that Java is still a major requirement for Mobile apps, and PHP plays a major role in Mobi Web Development. HTML5 is emerging as a next generation trend technology.


• Write and Post Human resource related articles in Social Networks with your Brand name. Educate the users about ethics, work cultures, Work – Life Balance and even personal finance management. These support areas are required for a healthy human resource management


• Create discussions on common interview questions and monitor how the attitude is changing with current scenarios.


• Ask Questions, Create Polls and Share them – let people participate and it helps for create a knowledge-base community

Our team of professionals, work for the above mentioned activities in content development and content presentations. The core idea is to create a community, where knowledge and professional values are connected together as growth.

3 Quick tips to create secured Smartphone access

Are you using a Smartphone? Yes..? Oh Good. !! I am sure you are using your phone not just as a device to talk to your friends, send and receive messages – but also to store email messages, personal and office documents, presentations, audio, video files etc. When I discussed about their usage of smartphone devices, many friends accepted that they are using it as a mass storage device too – Just like a personal USB drive.

Security becomes an essential point, when your device is used as an information storage gadget. Smartphone device can be protected by using passwords / PINs.  Strong passwords are vital for maximum security. I propose these quick tips to create secured smartphone passwords / PINs.

1. Use folder security settings always. Nokia, Samsung devices are having inbuilt folder management tools with encryption options. Android devices, Windows Phones and Iphone devices are having operating system level file / folder security settings with encryption, and password protected.

2. Create passwords with combination Text and Numbers. Change your passwords often. Never keep text passwords related to you, your work or family member names. Secure your memory card, Bluetooth access with PIN password. This will be usually numbers only. Don’t use continues numbers, same numbers, birthdays / anniversary dates etc.

3. Create multiple profiles and use a profile with less information visibility while traveling. Create un-usual gestures, while using Android point based locking system or similar.

Share your tips to secured smartphone access – and follow me in twitter for more ideas.

3 essential security policies for Smartphone usage inside Office

Small Offices, Medium size organizations or Large corporate– the official Information should be secured, and managed to its maximum level through defined security policies.

The security policies should be a formal, brief, and high-level statement that embraces an organization’s general beliefs, goals, objectives, and acceptable procedures for a specified subject area. In our case, it is all about smartphone usage.

Define a mandatory require compliance, standards and guidelines, failure to comply results in disciplinary action for every policy division.

I advocate these 3 fundamental security policies for smartphone usage inside office.

Policy #1: Every Smartphone use should activate phone locking after a period of inactivity and use strong passwords or PINs for reactivation.

Policy #2: An Employee must connect from smartphone to the corporate network over secure VPN’s always.

Policy #3: An Employee must encrypt all corporate information stored on the phone using provided tools

I am sure; these policies can be a good start for security management in organizations. Share your comments and suggestions for more discussions.

How to create awareness on securing smart phones?

Smartphone is not just a next generation fancy device anymore. It is becoming an unavoidable gadget for most of the IT and non-IT employees. Just check around you – How many friends in your office are using Smartphone? Based on my experiences, I see almost 40% to 60% of IT staffs are using Smartphone. Yes, the non-IT industry is also having Smartphone impact – I see at-least 30% to 45% users.

The challenge is – most of the Smartphone users are unaware of its security risks. So, my question is – are you taking any steps to create an awareness on securing smart phones! Yes, it is required – not only for personal security purposes, but also for corporate IT information security purposes too.

I recommend the following simple activities to create a basic awareness on securing Smartphone devices.

1. Create Simple Posters about known smartphone security challenges and stick them around work places

2. Educate about secured Bluetooth usage and keeping Bluetooth off – while not in use.

3. Create small Case-Stories and publish them in official emails / Official social networks.

4. Guide a session on insecure Wi-Fi networks, and security challenges in using such networks.

5. Call for a Security weekend Day – to make them present their security tips for public interest.

I suggested these activities to my clients – many are following it and seeing some good improvements. I would like to listen in your experiences.

Have a nice day.

Career opportunities in Social Media Marketing

Every day is a new day, and every day opens new doors for opportunities – Not just for fresher, but also for experienced professionals. Social Media Marketing is another new door – come let’s see what kind of opportunities are there and what skills we need to get that…

UX Developer/Designer

• You need some hands on experience with XHTML, CSS, HTML5


• Ajax, Javascript, Jquery


• Prototyping skills, platform specific UX knowledge (Iphone, Android etc), PHP, MYSQL

Social Media Specialist

• Knowledge in creating social media content – Text, Pictures, Polls etc


• creativity and documented immersion in social media, including viral marketing campaigns


• Familiarity with website content management systems and professional graphics software.


• Excellent written and oral communication skills and success in presenting information/data.

Social Game Designer

• Experience in game and entertainment content of Social Media


• Knowledge in PC game development – with Flash


• Logical Thinking &  Creative mind


• Action scripting, PHP, MYSQL programming

Social Media Account Manager

• Updating Client's social media accounts with meaningful content to effectively engage audience.


• Weekly companywide social media tips and updates


• Monitor client’s brands and campaigns.


• Administration and moderation of multiple client social media accounts


• Building client social media accounts and pages


• Development and implementation of Facebook and Twitter promotions


• Conceptualization and project coordination of mobile applications and mobile optimized sites


• Coordination and development of custom Facebook content


• Project management, including managing contracts, budgets, project schedules, vendors, and staff

Social Media Strategist

• Ability to develop best practices and policies regarding use of various digital media


• Recommend and deploy an appropriate mix of communications strategies and approaches as they relate to websites, mobile technology, blogs, social media networks, social bookmarking, discussion groups and forums, to drive brand awareness and engagement.


• Facilitate ways to measure, test and optimize platforms, leveraging tools that will aid in driving programs


• Three to five years experience in a digital marketing role at a digital marketing/development, advertising or public relations firm preferred

Are you guys ready for these opportunities – why waiting, Just update your resume and try the new world… !!

Creating Business values using .Mobi Website

LinkedIn.com is giving me lots of opportunities to meet professionals and people from various industries, of course with all different kind of business requirements. I recently met a LinkedIn contact – who works in Education Management, for one of his requirement on .Mobi websites for Educational purposes. He suggested me to give a write-up mentioning the business values of .Mobi website – so that he can present it to his higher authorities. I did a small research on it, and designed a PPT for him, but I would like to share some points which I learned through the research.

• The success of creating business value of .mobi site starts with defining the purpose of a mobile website itself


• A strategic business plan and setting realistic goals are important as first step for a successful mobile website


•  Identification of types of users – including prospects, clients, investors, job seekers. After this process is completed, now we determine at a high level what our mobile website needs to accomplish. Visitors will make decisions based on their experience and perception of the Mobile website.


• Organizations should invest in hiring a professional Mobile web consultant to assist them with designing a site that will achieve their goals and purpose of the site.


• Mobile Web Users are a unpredictable group; they have short attention spans, fly from page to page, and are highly judgmental, holding their attention takes careful planning and execution.


• A Mobile website has several aspects including design, content and functionality.


• The design of the website should be simple to browse, should use the same color theory / theme of your corporate website and should be clear with right size fonts and images.


• The content should be easy readable text in small paragraphs – mostly about services, product information and interactive transactions (ex: javascript based registration for corporate events) if any.


• The content should follow Attention, Interest, Desire and Action template – to invoke the desired visitor response.


• Mobile websites should be powered using SEO – Search Engine Optimization, a technique that allows a .mobi site to be indexed and ranked on search engines such as Google search engine for mobile websites.  Using analytics will provide us reports on SEO functionalities.

Social Media Marketing for Beginners

I am sure most of the MBA guys know about ‘integrated marketing communications’ – it is a practice organizations follow to connect with their target market. Social Media marketing is a recent addition in integrated marketing communications plan. It uses the promotional concepts – advertising, public relations, sales promotion, publicity and direct marketing. Social Media marketing is creating a content that attracts attention and encourages community members to share it with their community groups – basically social networks. The message comes from a community member is trusted – thus it gets more value.

Social Media is a easy accessible platform to anyone using Internet and Mobile Phones. There are very popular networks – Ex: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace etc.

Technically, we call social media marketing as Social Media Optimization. There are many tools available for these concepts

• Social Media Monitoring


• Social Aggregation


• Social Book Marking and Tagging


• Social Analytics and Reporting


• Automation


• Social Media


• Blog Marketing


• Validation

Let me share more about these concepts and some useful tools soon. Meantime, I expect the users to share their comments.

Wordpress Mobile Pack – advanced .Mobi Development

Wordpress Mobile pack is another very powerful complete toolkit, to help mobilize the corporate Wordpress Site. It comes with excellent mobile switcher, to select themes based on the type of the user, that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.

Note: PHP 5.x is also highly recommended, although the plugin also works with PHP 4.3.

Some extraordinary features include:

• A set of advanced themes for Nokia and WebKit devices, designed by Forum Nokia. These also look beautiful on Android, iPhone and Palm devices


• Standards adherence, ensuring that mark-up is valid XHTML-MP 1 and the site scores 5 on mobiReady.


• Device adaptation, including the rescaling of images, intelligent splitting of articles and posts into multiple pages, the simplifaction styles, and the removal of non-supported media.


• A mobile admin panel, that allows the blog managers to access the admin interface via a mobile device, with simplified access to the most common features such as editing a post or approving comments.


• Mobile analytics, allowing you to track your mobile traffic with PercentMobile, and view simple local traffic tallies


• A mobile ad widget to easily enable mobile ads with AdMob or Google's Mobile Adsense.

Project Status Reports

Regular status report is a necessary expectation from any stakeholder. A project manager is expected to decide, the frequency and format of this report. Ensure it satisfies these points

• What has been completed


• What has not been completed and why


• What is being done about the incomplete work


• What concerns, issues and risks remain  unsolved


• What needs to be done about these unsolved problems

I always suggest using a simple PPT, but few stakeholder s expect word / excel documents too. Fine, try these important elements in your reports and discuss with me, what else you usually expect.

• Slide 1: A graphical summery of overall process – Ex: Dashboard, Gantt Chart


• Slide 2: Completed Tasks, Milestones


• Slide 3: Not Completed Tasks – and Action points


• Slide 4: Issues/Concerns/Risks – and Action points


• Slide 5: List of milestones with due dates – in next reporting period

Estimations – Some best practices

Estimation is a decision about how much time and resources are required to carry out a piece of work to acceptable standards of performance. Fine, most of the project managers do this estimation practice, with the help of tech leads, or key team members. Here, I would like to share some best practices based on my experiences in estimation process.

• Schedule full-time team members at three and a half to four working (productive)days per week to allow for holidays, absences, and training sessions
• Always include management time where appropriate as an additional 10%
• In planning, avoid splitting tasks between individuals – when tasks are split between two individuals do not reduce the time by 50% - allow time for communication and coordination
• Take individual experience and ability into account
• Allow time for cross functional data transfer and responses
• Build in time for unscheduled urgent tasks arising on other non-project activities
• Build in spare time for problem solving and project meetings

For each key stage keep a record of
• Any assumptions made during estimations
• Where contingencies have been added & how much added.

Facebook – How to do Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing in Facebook is a very interesting thing – coz the platform & audience are already ready for you. All you need to do it is engaging them with right content at right time. Recently I met a client, who wanted to have a plan for promoting his products through facebook – he wanted facebook specifically because, he heard the value of facebook through many channels.

I suggested these activities in my Plan…

• The profile should be impressive with its content. Use the Product image as Profile Photo and fill the profile by keeping the product in mind. The product should act as a person promotes himself in market. The profile should talk more about its key plus points rather than just specifications.


• Create a Facebook Page, and get connected with audience. Create an impressive banner, and present your offers through Facebook Page. Create adverts and promote them through your friends


• Posts should be informative and meaningful. Make your posts interesting by putting them as questions and polls. Let the users participate – it makes more promotions


• You can create some facebook applications – as simple games, Quiz content or choose the product, etc. It should be filled with fun, and useful to understand about the product. Choose the applications from facebook store, and utilize them – careful about the competitors.


• Connect Blog RSS Feeds, Twitter Feeds, Tumblr Posts with facebook and hire a team of professionals to do promotion for you through these channels.

What do you think – if you have some new ideas, share it with us… it will be helpful for everyone.

What are the customer needs?

How do you meet the customer’s expectation? How to understand the needs of a customer clearly before producing project definition to them? Well, this is an important activity in any mobile application development project, but it is easy if you follow these simple steps.

• Understand your customer and business


• Understand the customer’s environment – technical & business beliefs


• Demonstrate your awareness of the customer’s technical and business needs


• Ensure Customer and End-user needs are aligned – see from different views


• Expose and hidden expectations – technical mostly