Social Media Optimization - the new SEO dimension

Social Media Optimization opens a steam valve in the world of eMarketing

Online marketing takes on a new challenge presented by new search algorithms that are increasingly putting more value on your social media presence than ever before. The SEO industry is making sure that online businesses continue to benefit from search engine marketing efforts with social media optimization (SMO) that has opened up new opportunities to leverage your presence in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, along with media sharing sites like YouTube to be a step ahead of competition.

Over the last 5 years, social networks have created an entirely novel way of reaching your markets through its word-of-mouth potential to bring your products and service to millions without even spending the usual ad dollars behind traditional marketing communication channels. Social media optimization (SMO) is the new darling behind social media marketing that has now become an essential component in boosting your online presence. It is an online marketing tool that makes your content readily accessible and shareable across the social media networks.

Supercharge your online marketing efforts with the hottest new technologies

While SEO technology allows eMarketing to generate as much traffic to your commercial website as possible, there is now a compelling paradigm where generation of web traffic gives way to ensuring that as many online users see your website's content. This is what SMO technology does to the online business. Today, driven by the changes in Google's search algorithm, content is king.

It no longer matters where your content resides. Search engines like Google need not even be the first point of contact to your adds. SMO done right can bring people to view your content from apps, widgets, videos in YouTube, or Photos is Flickr. YouTube itself is now only second to Google as a search engine. Just make a search on YouTube, and you get results in several pages just like in any search engine. Same with Facebook and Flickr, and similar social networks and media sharing site. Your website can be accessed and shared whether you're at home, office or on the road through mobile phones. In fact, the more transportable your content is, the more it can reach more people. Social media can further increase web traffic from several websites through word-of-mouth social referral traffic.

SMO is about having a larger and more active social media presence for your brand, whether your organization has one or not, as SMO leverages the social networks of others to your benefit. SMO can lead more people to see your content as friends encourage their friends down the line to read your specific content. If your content can appeal to one person, there's a higher chance their friends are just as likely to be interested in your content. Just imagine the multiplier effect if your content can appeal to a dozen from your targeted markets. At the end of the day, a high viewership of your content leads to significant improvements in search engine optimization, as major search engines count on the quality links from these social media sites as a vote to your website that carries more weight than the backlinks from your articles in e-zines and directories.

Invest in a Keyword Optimizer to start off you SEO

Using the right keywords for your site increases the chances your web pages will land in the first page pf a search return. Unfortunately, website developers and business owners search-optimizing their online presence often make the mistake of defining their keywords simply based on what they associate their products with. It doesn't always work. Why? Because keywords are what customers use when searching for what they need, not what you think your products or services mean. In short, you need to do more relevant research on your keywords and even use keyword optimizing tools to fine-tune your research.

Long Tail Keywords

Finding the right keywords gets a bit more challenging when it comes to narrowing down a search for long-tail keywords. These are 3+ word strings or phrases that your customer might use to get a more focused product search. For instance, both "budget cellphone in Dallas for 2013" and "best Verizon budget cellphone 2013" are long tail keywords that derive from the theme keyword "cellphone." Targeting "cellphone" gets millions of searches on Google each month. But when you search the term, you get 59 million websites in a search result. You don't want to compete with that many websites and expect to be #1 among 59 million other sites many of which are also search-optimizing their pages.

But when you plug "best Verizon budget cellphone 2013" in a Google search, the return is reduced to 7.3 million. That's still a lot to compete with, but represents a significant narrowing that gives you better chances of landing in the first page search result. The main point to consider in long tail keywords is that they are just part, albeit a critical one, of any SEO effort. With several of your webpages, including blogs and content in e-zines optimized for your long tail keyword, your optimization efforts add up week after week and eventually land you on the first page. Also bear in mind that your homepage need not land on the search return. Your inner web pages might land there well ahead of your homepage. It all depends on how the inner pages use your keywords so that subject topic being searched could be better served by your inner pages.

Software tools that optimize your keyword research

There are a number of online software tools you can use such as the Google Adwords Keyword Tool which is one of the most popular keyword research tools used by only marketers to generate targeted traffic to their websites. It's a free tool on the side. What it does best is provide a list of top long tail keywords that matches your theme keyword based on its extensive database of search query information only Google has as the largest search engine on the planet. However, this advantage is watered down since you won't be able to leverage on what other search engines have which 3rd party non-Google owned keyword optimizers enjoy. In addition, there can be literally thousands of these keyword suggestions that are often inaccurate and require a lot of filtering. You're pretty much on your own to narrow down and choose the most suitable for your site.

It is here where some of the more competent keyword optimizing tools can automate the process to arrive at a precise keyword targeting following the four golden rules in keyword optimization - Relevance, Traffic, Competition, and Commerciality. The Google Keyword tool can best be used as your starting point and Master Samurai can pull an initial list of keywords from it. Then its applies PBR (Phrase to Broad Match) and SEOT (SEO Traffic) relevancy filters to remove any misleading or irrelevant keywords and shorten the list to a few, down to the top ten keywords that are used by the top ranking websites in the industry where your product or service belongs. These are the websites you will want to beat and you can use some of the keywords they use to kick-start your SEO effort.

Conclusion

The only drawback is that these tools, at least the better ones, do not come for free, though often offered  with a one-month free trial so you can check out first hand what it can do that the Google Adwords Keyword tool can't. But consider their modest price tags, often ranging from $150 to $250 as a small investment in making your SEO initiatives start off on the right direction, easily and with more confidence. Keyword optimization is the first step in any SEO effort. Do it wrong and all your subsequent SEO efforts will surely fail. But not with a competent Keyword optimizing tool at your side.

Taking in the right calories to lose weight

Overweight folks are always on the lookout for the best diet regimens that can lose excess fat. They often ask "how many calories should I eat to lose weight?" If you read the many nuggets of wisdom from several weight loss experts online, there are a few answers to the question that makes sense. Here are a couple of them:

You need a good calorie calculator

In theory, a pound of body weight equals around 3,500 calories. That means you need to consume fewer than 3,500 over a stretch of time to lose one pound. This can be your goal if set realistically over a period of time. For instance, you can eat 500 fewer calories per day and lose a pound in a week (500 x 7 day). Just be sure you don't go below daily survival calories. In general, you need no less than 1200 calories a day for female, and 1600 - 1800 calories for male.

There are several calorie calculators online. After specifying you age, weight, height, daily activity level (from sedentary to very active) and how much body weight you want to lose over a period of time, the better online calculators return with a recommended calorie intake over a period of time that progressively goes down as you lose weight over the period you've specified. One such helpful and well-designed calorie calculator can be found at www.healthyweightforum.org/eng/calculators/calories-required/.

It's not the calories you take in that matters, as long as you burn off more calories than you take in.

Apart from taking the right calories, Losing weight is also about burning excess fat. That won't happen if you continue to take in more calories than you burn off. This is often the mantra behind aerobics and strength-developing workouts. You can take in 500 more calories from your favorite ice cream, cakes and soda, but if you lose that much or more in a workout, then you can maintain or lose weight. Losing weight requires a holistic approach that uses the right mix of diet and exercise.

WebMD's Elaine Magee, MPH, RD (www.webmd.com/diet/features/8-ways-to-burn-calories-and-fight-fat) makes this point with her eight-point suggestion on how best to burn calories, the first of which is a rigorous workout. Cited in her article Christopher Wharton, PhD from the Yale University pointed out that the more time spent exercising, the more calories are burned. He further stresses the value of building muscle mass with the right strength exercise. Apart from burning calories in each workout session, having muscles burns more calories than body fat does even when you're at rest. Ten pounds of muscle can burn 50 calories each day compared to 20 calories from an equal amount of body fat even when doing nothing.

Burning calories is not exclusively the domain of gym workouts. Everything the body does burn calories. Magee points out that firing up the digestive process alone burns calories. Hence, spreading your food intake over several short meals and snacks each day will turn on your digestion and burn more calories than if you were to take the usual heavy meals during lunch and dinner only.

Even fidgeting burns calories since they get you to move a part of your body repeatedly while sitting or doing nothing. Jamie Pope from the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing cited in Magee's article revealed that any body movement spends energy and mundane body movements like fidgeting have been shown in many studies to burn calories, possibly even more than formal gym workouts. Rob Stein of the Washington posts (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41897-2005Jan27.html) corroborate this and cites a 2005 study conducted by James A. Levine of the Mayo Clinic which showed that fidgeting along could lose 350 lbs a day, enough to lose 10-35 lbs a year. While losing 10 lbs in a year is not exactly the goal of many obese people, it certainly helps the weight loss effort even when you're doing anything at all.

Conclusion

A calorie calculator won't reduce your weight, but the information on the right calories you need over a period of time provides a valuable guide to your weight loss effort. At the very least, this directly answers the question, "how many calories should I eat to lose weight?" Indirectly, knowing that every type of body movement and activity burns calories, from spreading your meals more evenly each day, fidgeting, to a formal gym workout session will complement a diet regimen that allows you to consume the calories within the prescribed levels. With a strong determination, such a knowledge religiously followed can get you to succeed in achieving your weight loss goal.

Promoting Manila

The 500-year old city of Manila in the Philippines is one of the cheapest and most entertaining cities to visit in this part of the world. Your first day can start with a visit to the historic Spanish fortress city of Fort Santiago in Intramuros along with the majestic 16th century Manila Cathedral. Just a few minutes away, take a stroll on the city's most popular landmark - the Rizal Park.

The National Museum is next to get a glimpse of local culture and history. Then, just half an hour's ride south is Villa Escudera, a rustic sugar plantation where you can savor a sumptuous buffet of native delicacies while wading in the waters near a waterfall. You can end your day with a majestic view of the Manila sunset right from your hotel.

On day two, shopping for the best bargains is your next fun activity at the Quiapo and Divisoria districts. Then, before leaving, get a taste of local fast food from Jollibee and know why it has trumped McDonald's as the number one fast food chain in the country.

Zynga shows the way for online marketing

If there's one company who turned the social networking phenomenon of the 21st century into a milking cow, it has to be Zynga. The San Francisco-based social gaming company has leveraged the social reach of Facebook along with the market reach of Android and the iPhone to become a $1.1 billion company from developing online games. Its most popular games such as FarmVille and CitiVille, along with ChefVille and the recent Zynga Poker are played by an estimated 265 million online social gamers as of January 2013. Roughly 80% of its revenues comes from Facebook.

Real world problems + Marketing Lessons

But not all is well with Zynga. After it started trading on NASDAQ in December 2011 with an IPO of $10 per share, Zynga's share prices has plummeted to reach $2 per share in 2012. It appears that investors have become cautious about the company's shaky business model as its revenues failed to meet analyst forecasts as early as the 2nd quarter of 2012.

So what went wrong and what marketing lessons From Zynga can we get from this? Firstly, it now appears that social gaming has a fluid and short retention factor where casual gamers soon lose interest in the games. Players on its Farmville have been diminishing by the millions every month. Studies have shown that social games retain only 38% of their users after a month and 14% before the 6th month. This makes it important for a social gaming company like Zynga to introduce new games without let-up. Indeed, Zynga's strategy has been to put more game titles to catch those leaving older games. The company has become a Pacman gobbling up small social game developers. Unfortunately, investors are not impressed. While newer and presumably more exciting social game titles can promise more markets, Zynga is actually just moving their social from one title to another and it has yet to impress investors that its market value is well worth investing into.

But perhaps the most serious problem is that Zynga does not own its main distribution channel - Facebook. Not owning the platform that its customers use to play its games has put Zynga at a long-term disadvantage. It's at the mercy of the social network leader. The tumultuous relationship between Zynga and Facebook is well known. No one knows what will happen to Zynga once its contract with Facebook expires a month from now. It may be a bit late in the game that Zynga has made a gaming presence with other social network sites like Google+. Spreading its online gaming muscle across more social network sites is something it should have done earlier. As it is, Zynga has put almost all its proverbial eggs in one basket. That's like getting only one store to sell your products.

Opening the road from online gaming to gambling

One area where Zynga has made significant repercussion is in the online gambling world. Zynga's 's Poker may just be a game where you buy loads of fake money with real money online. But this has caught the attention of serious online gambling kingpins who have been struggling for years to get more people to gamble online. 30 million online poker gamers each month is not something they can overlook. What was Zynga doing that they were not doing? It's social media. Online gamblers have failed to capitalize on a ready market. If and when the US Congress finally gets its act together for a comprehensive online iGambling law, it only takes Zynga to replace its Poker game's fake money with real one to become the king of the hill in online gambling.

The ultimate lesson: Social Media Marketing = Market Success

From its inception in 2007, Zynga achieved its status as the #1 online gaming company in so short a time thanks to Facebook and the power that social networking has in creating the proverbial market reach and brand awareness advertisers have been eternally pinning for. On hindsight, Facebook users can remember how annoying those FarmVille solicitation incessantly appearing in news feeds and posts. But the annoying truth is, it worked extremely well for Zynga. It didn't take long to say "let me see what this Farmville is about" and you clicked the ads. After that, you were hooked to the game.

Hitching an unknown product to a rising star confirms what just about everyone know but rarely practices. It is more widely used in politics. At a time when Facebook was just in its infancy from a 2004 launch, Zynga latched its future on what it saw was a promising sunrise business in cyberspace. The period saw the golden age of social networking when advertising was free and going viral for any advertising message on a massive scale was fast and easy.

Zynga took advantage of this and entered into a preferential symbiotic relationship with Facebook that gave them first hand information on how best to make their online games fit into the evolving Facebook technology. It a;lso allowed them to exploit the emerging social media distribution circuit. This effectively created a barrier to future entrants in online social games. The rest, as they say, is history.

A lot has been said extolling the value of social networking that went from a mere campus trend into the global phenomenon that has defined 21st century online landscape. More significantly, social networking has spawned a new way to market new products and services in what is now called Social Media Marketing. Zynga's market success is about social media marketing. Consider what they did with it

Engage in ruthless customer acquisition

Apart from an extensive and purposive campaign right within Facebook pages as well as emails, Zynga maximized every advertising opportunity to create online gaming awareness and develop interest among Facebook users. Never mind that it was easy and free and Zynga took advantage of it. The social network allowed Zynga to harness your own friends and relatives on the network to interest you in their games. Once hooked, you become an advertising mouthpiece on the social network. Imagine this multiplied across Facebook that now has almost a billion users on the planet.

Retain your customer

To a large extent, Zynga was able to stem the slide in player interest for any one game with incentives. They offered free this or that gaming element that extended the gaming delight beyond boredom. CitiVille, for instance, offered the player free batteries and new buildings to get you to the next gaming level via email prompts. And if you missed to play for a long time, you get email notifications with even more freebies.

But what stood out was Zynga's customer relationship management by opening up communication between Zynga's game developers and its game players. This ensured that the games got constantly better with enhancements the players themselves want. Nothing could be more customer-driven that this. In fact, after a short time from their launches, what started as bare games are now among the best online games with their rich features sourced from their own players.

Conclusion

The company does have its problems and challenges, but what company does not? The more successful one is, the more problems confront it. But social media marketing can make like a bit easier for many companies struggling to get a share of the market. From a small online gaming company in 2007, to the biggest by 2010, Zynga has shown the way in social media marketing.

Zynga makes the most of fickle markets

A business that thrives on fads patronized by a fickle-minded market won't last long; not unless the business continues to fan the flames of interest to make the fad become a defining character of 21st century online gaming. That's basically what Zynga has done quite successfully since it started out in 2007.

After its first online game FarmVille that ushered in a novel dimension in social networking community, a succession of delightful online games that you can only play on the Facebook platform followed like Citiville, ChefsVille, Texas HoldEm Poker, Farmville2 and Bubble Safari, just to mention a few. From a virtual unknown, Zynga as of 2011 has become a $1.1 Billion online gaming company and growing, with more than 45 million daily active users with 265 million monthly active users - all that in just 4 years. Here are a few business lessons from Zynga that new companies can learn.

Lesson 1: Innovation and business expansion

In an effort to be everything to everyone, the Zynga business model cave in to the gaming needs of just about every market segment that now populates the social networking landscape. In order to keep social gamers happy, it has been the business strategy of the company to bring out ever so new and exciting games while indulging in a shopping spree to buy out small start-ups in online games development. It bought out Challenge Games and XPD games and launched FrontierVille. It expanded into Europe with the purchase of Dextrose Labs to become Zynga Germany, then bought Newtoy, Inc. All these were acquired in 2010 alone and by the end of that year, it had released CitiVille which surpassed Farmville as Zynga's most popular game at that time with more than 16 million active gamers playing it each day.

Lesson 2: But don't spread the business too thinly

While expansion is the next logical move after a successful showing in a market, it pays to be more cautious so that the business expands without spreading its resources too thinly. Sustaining business growth through acquisitions can be beneficial if the acquired companies contributed to the buttomline, However, Zynga has yet to show profitability after all the software developers it had acquired in 2010. Developers under its umbrella are always in constant communication with their players while, while laudable as a strategy to keep customers happy, have also stretched Zynga's resources too thinly in maintaining and enhancing these games. As of 2011, Zynga has about 2450 employees and growing. Sooner or later, at the rate it has lost market capitalization from a $10 per share high in 2011 to just $2 today, it would not be surprising for the company to shed some extra fat to remain agile in the market with more focus on the games that really matter to its markets.

Lesson 3: Focus on the potentially lucrative revenue source

There are clear indications that Zynga is narrowing its focus on high growth industries which includes mobile gaming but with more emphasis on its proven winning titles. The mobile business is a natural extension of the social networking phenomenon that has opened up mobile gaming opportunities for its winning game titles. If Zynga succeeds on growing its current games to the iOS and Android platforms using new revenue earning models, it is poised to see even higher business prospects for 2013 and beyond.

Lesson 4: Always be on the look for potential new business model

Zynga's Poker (formerly Texas HoldEm Poker)may be just another social online game, but it has the potential to create a new business horizon for Zynga. The game currently requires players to buy fake money using real money transacted online to extend the game's thrills. Once the US Congress passes its iGambling bill, it would only take Zynga to start using real money for its Poker game and overnight, the game enters the online gambling business that has been plagued with legal problems for its iGambling business. Zynga already announced in October 2012 a business partnership with an international gambling firm, Bwin Party Digital Entertainment, to start an online real-money gaming service in 2013 with the world's first online FarmVille-based slots game using real money. The alliance promises new and more lucrative revenue streams for Zynga.

Lesson 5: Hitch the business to a rising star

In 2007, Zynga made a fateful business decision to stake its future with then rising star Facebook. Only three years old at the time, Facebook was seeing significant fanbase growth by the millions every month ending up with its first 100 million users by end of 2008. Zynga saw the promise of social networking as Facebook provided the platform and the mechanism to spread the word about its games without incurring the usual advertising dollars. More importantly, there was the potential of ads going viral on a massive scale that could reach millions of potential gamers fast and easy. Zynga entered into a mutually beneficial business relationship with Facebook that enabled the fledgling online gamer to have first line access to technical information that allowed their online games to have the seamless fit with the evolving Facebook platform while giving them exclusive social media distribution. Indeed, if a business can find something like a rising star that can provide a unique competitive edge as what Facebook did to Zynga, such a star can shortcut the road to success with ease.

Lesson 6: Leverage on innovative technology

New technology is not enough; it's how you harness it to create a business advantage that matters. Zynga harnessed the cloud computing technology that was just starting in its early years. No one at Zynga knows beforehand that a new game would be successful, like CitiVille. when it was launched in 2010, so that investing on the server farms to support an optimistic capacity projection could easily go to waste. Knowing such unpredictability, Zynga used Amazon's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure as a rented service, paying only for the capacity used in newly launched games. Once it reached a predictable volume growth, Zynga brought the successful game in-house using its private cloud computing architecture. Had CitiVille flopped, Zynga could easily decommission the rented cloud computing service, and no investment would be wasted.

Conclusion

Once last word in these business lessons from Zynga is the fact is that Zynga faces uncertain future by putting all its eggs into one basket, as it were. In an attempt to correct this, Zynga has started diversifying its social networking presence with Google+ and other social networks. This may be a title late in coming. By the end of March this year, its contract with Facebook ends. Unless Zynga plans to renew this partnership, it could lose 80% of its revenue streams.

Anderson Silva could be the best MMA fighter in the world today

Fighters come and go in the eight weight divisions of the US-based Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) series, the world's largest mixed martial arts (MMA) event held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada since 1993. Of all the fighters across its weight divisions, only one holds the record for the most wins and the longest reign as world champion. This is Anderson Silva - the current UFC title holder in the middleweight division. The 37-year old Brazilian mixed martial artist made his debut at the UFC Fight Night 5 on June 28, 2006 and since then had won 12 consecutive fights and 10 title defenses. Various publications such as Sherdog, Yahoo! Sports and ESPN have ranked him as the #1 middleweight mixed martial artist in the world, pound for pound. His exploits earned him the reputation as the greatest mixed martial artist of all time. No less than UFC head honcho Dana White agrees.

Early career

Born in April 14, 1975 as a middle child of 4 in a poor family in Curtiba, Brazil, Anderson Silva has shown a natural flair for martial arts right from his humble beginnings as a Jiu-Jitsu trained 12 year old kid who subsequently trained in Tae Kwon Do and finally mastering Muay Thai by age 16. He got his black belt in Tae Kwon Do when he was 18, followed by a yellow rope in Capoeira while establishing himself as a professional boxer. In 1997, he made his professional debut in the Brazilian ring in he welterweight class. After suffering his first loss to Luiz Azeredo by decision, he went on to win 9 consecutive wins 6 of which were won by TKO or submission. In 2001, he started earning his world class reputation as the only man to end the 20-win reign of Hayato Sakurai by unanimous decision to win the Shooto Middleweight title in Japan.

The following year, Anderson Silva entered the Pride Fighting Championships with three initial wins before suffering a demotivating setback against Daiju Taksa. He left Pride with a decisive win against Jeremy Horn in 2004. Three months later saw his debut in the Cage Rage events in England with a win against noted striker Lee Murray. His return to Pride in December of that year saw another humbling loss to Rya Chonan that finally cost his participation in the Pride fights. Nevertheless, his determination to succeed showed in defending his Cage Rage title with successive wins against Matt Lindland., Mike Can Arsdale and Tony Fryklund.

Decisive Wins at the UFC

In June of 2006, after a disqualification loss to Yushin Okami in Rumble on the Rock in Hawaii for which he felt cheated, Anderson Silva made his debut at the UFC Ultimate Fight Night 5 where he ended the 5-win streak of Ultimate Fighter Chris Leben. The fight ended 49 seconds into the first round and showed Silva's excellent fighting form with an 85% striking accuracy. It was October 14th of that year that saw Silva earn his UFC Middleweight crown after a TKO win against UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin in the first round. His first title defense win against Travis Lutter became a non-title bout after Lutter failed to make it to the 185lb weight limit. The rest as they say is history. Anderson Silva cemented his reputation winning 10 title defenses against Nate Marquardt and Ruck Franklin in 2007, Dan Henderson and Patrick Cote in2008, Thales Leites in 2009, Demian Maia and Chael Sonnen in 2010, Vitor Belfort and Yushin Okami in 2012, and again Chael Sonnen in 2012.

Being the greatest MMA fighter in the UFC events is matched by Silva's private life as a happy family man with three sons and two daughters whom he loves so much. He had earlier planned on retiring when he reached 35 in 2010 but his contract with UFC required him to get into 6 more fights before retiring.

Fighting style of the greatest MMA of all time

With a high striking accuracy, powerful Muay Thai, counterstrike ability, concentration, and knockout power, Anderson Silva is considered to be the best MMA fighter whose main strength lies in technical precession, flawless transition and movement, and effective jabs. He has submitted famous grapplers that included Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt Travis Lutter and Olympic wrestlers Chael Sonnen and Dan Henderson. Silva has made a profound and lasting legacy on various UFC records that includes: Most all-time knockdowns at 17, highest strike accuracy at 67.8%, all-time winning percentage at 100%, longest all-time winning streak at 16, most number of fight victories at 11, most number of title defenses at 10 and the longest reigning champ in terms of days at 2,315 as of 2012. He could still break some of these records before he retires. When he does, the world of MMA fighting will have to wait for another with the same determined zeal to win, and fighting prowess of an Anderson Silva to match his record.

Obama's housing relief plans for veterans and servicemen

In his state of the union address last March 2012, President Obama announced a 2-step housing assistance aimed at helping war veterans and active US military servicemen acquire a home for their families amidst the current economic stagnancy. This is a concretization of his blueprint for rebuilding the nation with a call to action for his administration to support the recovery of the local housing market.

What the Housing Relief promises to do

At the heart of Obama's housing relief program is a two-step process his administration is implementing to help responsible homeowners, specifically service members and veterans, to avoid foreclosures and retain their homes. The process also aims to help those whose homes have been unfairly foreclosed or denied lower interests on their mortgages, as well as communities adversely impacted by the housing crisis. The relief is expected to benefit thousands of men in uniform and veterans and comes after a historic $25 billion housing settlements the Federal government entered into with the Attorneys General from 49 states completed in February this year.

The First Step

This involves providing relief to servicemen and veterans that already started with the $25 billion settlement. Under this step, the administration is expected to conduct the following:

• Review foreclosures suffered by servicemen and veterans dating back to 2006 and overseen by the DoJ's Civil Rights Division and those found wrongly foreclosed will be compensated with $116,785 plus an amount equal to the minimum of the lost home equity plus interests, or the amount stipulated under the Servicemember Civil Relief Act (SCRA) for violations resulting from a review by banking regulators;
• Review the files of service members dating back to 2008 and refund money lost because they were wrongfully denied the opportunity to reduce their mortgage payments through lower interest rates or wrongfully charged with interests higher than 6% on their mortgage in violation of SCRA. Those charged above the 6% ceiling will be entitled to a refund equal to no less than 4 times the amount charged.
• Provide financial relief to servicemen forced to sell their property for amounts less than their outstanding mortgage balances resulting from a Permanent Change in Station (PCS). The Homeowners' Assistance Program (HAP) of the Department of Defense stipulates that servicemembers forced to sell their homes at a loss due to PCS may be compensated for any loss in the sale. Under Obama's housing relief, the government will provide deficiency waivers and short sale agreements to similarly situated servicemembers but are not eligible for HAP. The implication here is that the benefits of HAP will be extended to servicemembers who acquired property between July 1, 2006 and December 31, 2008, or who received a PCS after October 1, 2010.
• Provide the Veterans Housing Benefit Program Fund with $10 million dollars through which the Department of Veterans Affairs can guarantee loans to eligible veterans on favorable terms for veterans; and.
• Support servicemen who had served in harm's way or are receiving Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay with certain protections against foreclosures as allowed under the SCRA. The law prohibits the foreclosure of active duty servicemen's home without getting a court order provided their mortgages were secured prior to be being assigned on active duty. The relief program extends foreclosure protection to all servicemen regardless of the date mortgage was secured and who received the Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger pay and were stationed outside of their domicile within 9 months of a foreclosure notice

The Second Step

This involves reducing fees for borrowers wanting to refinance their existing mortgages. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) would normally charge 1% of loan balances upfront plus 1.19% annually for insuring refinanced mortgages. FHA will cut its processing fees to 0.01% upfront for refinancing federally insured mortgages plus half of 1.19% (0.55%) every year on the refinance mortgage. Some 2-3 million mortgage holders could benefit from savings of around a thousand dollars annually through refinancing which they would not otherwise get under the current FHA fee structure. A typical FHA mortgage owner who wants to refinance a $175,000 outstanding balance on his mortgage can realize about $1,010 in monthly savings in monthly loan insurance payments.

A success or failure?

Quite apart from the election period that saw much of the energies of the incumbent president and his administration sapped during the campaign period, there has been little progress on many of the promised programs outlined in Obama's SOTU last March 2012. That included his housing relief for the military, and much of his overall relief to the general homeowners refinancing their mortgage failed to gain momentum. Congress has not moved at all to legislate the needed bill that would have allowed more homeowners to benefit from lower interest in refinancing their mortgages. On the other hand, newly-appointed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was able to bring two major banks to court - Bear Stearns and Credit Suisse, as part of Obama's SOTU promise to investigate abusive lending practices that have led to the current housing crisis. Now that he has been re-elected, it would appear that his housing relief program that would revitalize the housing markets will need more executive action than legislative fiat to get it going.

It is interesting to note that 6 months down the road, the official blogsite of the VA does not even mention Obama's two-step housing relief that is supposed to pump in $10 million into its coffers to guarantee low interest loans to eligible veterans. Instead, it credits the late President Roosevelt who signed the 1944 GI Bill into law that enabled veterans to have lo interest loans when purchasing their homes.

Conclusion

Obama's two-step housing relief for military servicemen and veterans remain promising for those who have suffered unjust foreclosures, hikes in interest rates, and those forced to sell their devalued homes dues to PCS issued during the country's worst housing crisis. It may be too early to tell if the program has achieved its objectives as the benefits promised may not be readily noticed until after the overall housing market slump, along with the nation's economy, has improved. With his 2nd term in the White House, Obama has the least four years of his presidency to prove that he can muster the will and the support from Congress to undertake the needed measures encouraging lenders to keep lending at low interest rates and slowly rebuilding consumer confidence towards achieving some sense of normalcy in the housing markets. It may come too slow for many, but this is certainly better than getting worse.

Here is another paper I wrote for a student about a Web 2.0 Business Improvement Proposal for the Brisbane Airport.

1        Introduction

            Web 2.0 is the term that defines a broad range of computing experience for the consumer that is revolves around the social dimension of online users.  It is not a specific update to browsing the World Wide Web such as what IP 6.0 does to the internet networking protocol.  Rather, it describes a 21^st century online experience that goes beyond mere web browsing.  The internet is not more than just a mere source of information but has taken on a computing platform that harnesses broadband telecommunications and several online technologies to bring a level of interactivity and collaboration between users online, broadening the implications of online computing into the business and socio-political landscape (Swabey, 2008).  Dale Dougherty of O’Rielly Media is credited for having coined the “Web 2.0” term back in 2004 to simply put a title that would best describe an O’Reilly media conference (Musser & O’Reilly, 2008). Since then, the term has stuck to describe an online experience that transcended a mere trend for social networking in Facebook and Twitter,  blogging with Tumblr and Google’s BlogSpot, and media content sharing in YouTube, Picasa and Flickr,  into a defining online computing landscape from which there is no turning back. 

            It is precisely this ease with which content can become viral, reaching a potential global market as well as the marketing potential of the experience that has not escaped entrepreneurs who realized early on that Web 2.0 has not only revolutionized the way people use the internet, but also created a valuable channel to enhancing brand awareness and reach that traditional advertising could only dream about at tremendous cost to the business.  This proposal looks at improving the operations of a major international airport – the Brisbane International – by optimizing its use of a few major Web 2.0 technologies that can make a profound difference to its business.

2        Current Situation

2.1       The Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC)

            Considered the 3^rd busiest airport in Australia after Sidney and Melbourne airports, Brisbane Airport (BNE in IATA code) is the only major passenger air terminal serving the residents and tourists of Brisbane and suburbs.  It has two runways and two passenger terminals - a domestic terminal with flights to and from around 46 destinations in the Australian states and territories, and an international terminal serving 32 foreign destinations. The 12 months ending in May 2011 saw it serving more than 20 million passengers. The airport is a one of the major hubs of Virgin Australia where it has a maintenance facility, and a secondary hub for Qantas and its budget affiliate Jetstar. 

Awards          

            Since the dawn of the 21^st century, the Brisbane airport has been the recipient of various awards starting in 2001 when the Australian Airports Association named it the Major Airport of the Year.  In in the current year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Association (ACCC) honoured it as the top Australian airport for quality of service for the 8th consecutive year while Skytrax bestowed on it the Best Regional Airport Award, following the same awards it got in 2008 and 2009. In 2010, its international terminal wing received the Queensland architecture award and entered the 18^th position in the list of the world’s top 25 airports while once again being voted by Skytrax as the "Best Australian Airport” (Brisbane Airport, 2012).  In 2005, the airport earned the IATA Eagle Award, the second of only two airports in Australia to be so awarded (IATA, 2005),

Ownership

            The Australian federal government has privatized several airports and the Brisbane airport was acquired from the Federal Airports Corporation by a private consortium consisting of private financial and government interests under the Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) led by Amsterdam Schiphol Airport which currently holds a management contract for airport on a 99-year lease of the facility.

           

2.2       Web 2.0 Business Implications

            Web 2.0 replaces the traditional view of a website as a channel for disseminating digital information to browsed and consumed by the user, with one that sees websites as engaging tools for structured interaction between people and between organizations and people. ‘Social media’ is a common, more meaningful alternative term that aggregates a panoply of Web 2.0 technologies behind blogs, wikis, social networks, social bookmarking, media file sharing, and news aggregation sites that are constantly evolving and recombining. The implications for business are numerous and have spawned the term Enterprise 2.0 for corporations as a counterpart to the consumer-centric Web 2.0. For starters, Web 2.0 changes the way customers interact with one another and that demands a change in the way businesses communicate and interact with their markets. A company website simply used an online product brochure is a wasted opportunity. More progressive companies are using Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 to stimulate discussion and community awareness around their brand, products and services, and are harvesting invaluable customer insight as a result.

            The key implication of social media to the business in promoting a closer relationship between the business and its publics – customers, government, other businesses, media,  and the general public. For the Brisbane Airport, communication between these segments of society and the business is made more convneient by the fact that travel related information (flight arrivals and departures, airport weather and traffic condition, potential and actual delays, boarding routines, things to do while at the airport, etc.) can now be accessed from anywhere and at any time, using PCs at home and mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops with internet access.  The same communication channel can be harnessed using social media marketing over wider market reach advertising but minus the regular advertising costs.

·         Brisbane Airport can promote cost effective deals on behalf of airport business concessionaires and airlines with an active and far-reaching social media presence.  These could result in added revenues to its business partners open up the option for the airport to earn sales commission from online bookings and online sales generated from a redirection of website traffic from its social media pages.

·         User Awareness once in the airport – Using Wi-Fi technology at the airport premises that can access a cloud database, passengers arriving thereat can be prompted to check on their travel requirements such as visas, the rules of what can be brought with them while on board or their destination, and provide them the easy channels to post feedback in regards to their travels via mobile gadgets. This creates a sense on interaction between the organization and the public the airport serves.

            Equally significant as the impact of Web 2.0 on consumers and customers are the implications for internal collaboration. That workhorse of internal communication – email – is looking decidedly tired as more effective and more efficient communication and collaboration tools devised in the consumer realm work their way into corporate life., Because an airport is a mecca for airlines and their businesses (catering, aircraft maintenance, etc.), along with airport business concessionaires (car hire firms, restaurants, trade and cultural exhibitors, duty free shops and even health and recreational establishments), harnessing the social interactive power of Web 2,0 can bring these internal elements into a more cohesive and productive group acting towards a shared commitment with airport management as if they as employees of the airport itself.

            But some companies appreciate the business value of Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 than others. Companies like Dell and PlusNet use it to learn more about how they can serve their customers better. Others, like Wachovia Bank and Best Buy use Web 2.0 tools to help their companies and business partners work together more synergistically with improved social cohesion (Swabey, 2008).  Every Web 2.0 application shows why it is imperative for the company, particularly its information technology departments to understand and harness Web 2.0 from a technical and social perspective.  By enabling collaboration and fostering closer relationships with their stakeholders (markets and publics as well as governments and business partners), Web 2.0 empowers the business to bring its marketing, customer service and business development activities to better economies and cost efficiencies.

 

2.3.      Web 2.0 in BAC

            The company is open to adapting emerging new technologies in its business operations. In a press release issued by Cisco (2012), the Brisbane Airport Corporation has implemented virtualization technology from network solutions provider Cisco, storage solutions provider EMC and virtualization software provider VMware to strengthen the company ability to enhance economies of airport operations and customer responsiveness through strategies harnessing emergent technologies information and communications technologies (ICT).  But along with this, just exactly how far Brisbane Airport has arrived in harnessing Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 as a means to further the ends of its business imperatives is seen by its current social media activities (Abady, 2012).   The BAC has established a relatively wide social media presence with the following:

·         Mobile version of official  website enabling mobile users to check flight details using smartphones with internet access;

·         Official Facebook page in standard format and linked to the corporate website

·         Official Twitter account; and

·         Official Pinterest account

            Having said that, the airport’s social media presence can stand significant improvements in the way it interact with its customers and airport concessionaires.  For instance, their mobile website version displays flight arrival and departure details.  However, given the fact that over 20 million foreign passengers have used or passed through the terminal in 2011/12, it should not be that difficult to incorporate a language selection options for passengers on the existing mobile phone application (see Figure 1). This is more of a feature enrichment rather than an innovation as most online services catering to several nationalities generally have some form of language transcription that can cater to people that do not use English as their first language.

            There is currently a gap in marketing infrastructure of Brisbane Airport Corporation that social networking platforms such as Facebook, blogging and social media sharing could help close. Facebook can essentially be used like a live wiki for thousands travellers who are Facebook users who may want to be remain updated by simply clicking one button and getting linked to the official Brisbane Airport page. The type of information that the Airport can share on Facebook can be extremely broad, ranging from quick facts about the airport and say its baggage procedures and limitations to Updates on the Traffic and congestion troubling the primary routes in and out of the facility.

            There is great room for improvement within the relationship and closeness that the consumers feel towards the airport.  Brisbane Airport is a large multi-faced business that needs to leverage communicative competence in bringing together the disparate business concession operating within the pre-departure, post-departure and transit experience of passengers.   Using social media to enable the Brisbane Airports marketing strategy could aid in helping establish a better relationship with the thousands of travellers who use social networks as well as employees working in the airport. Social networks are all about crating and sustaining a feeling of connection that keeps users logging in every day or several times in a day and while the Brisbane Airport has already gained a foothold into the social media bandwagon, there is ample room to make this presence grow to its optimum potential.

2.4       Business Needs Analysis

            An exhaustive analysis or assessment of business needs is a fundamental diagnostic process to determine root causes of current problems and situations that can prepare the company in exploring and evaluating various alternatives in solving these problems, filling in proficiency or competency gaps or market expectation and real-world service quality gaps, and addressing the needs that can enable the company to better achieve its business objectives.  For the Brisbane Airport Corporation, the current situational analysis using a Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)) analytical framework has been used to identify the major areas when Web 2.0 can be harnessed to maximize the company’s business potential in its target markets (Weihrich, 1982).  In addition, the PESTLE framework which explores in more detail the external factors can feed right into the opportunities and threats in the SWOT analysis (JISC, 2012).  These are the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal and Environmental factors that may be missed if only the SWOT was used (Thomas et al, 2007).        

Table 1: SWOT Analysis

SWOT Areas	Assessment
Strengths	·         The Airport is a major domestic and international hub for several airlines in the Brisbane metropolis serving as a gateway to Queensland, the region and the world. ·         BNE is seeing an increase in visitor arrivals going through the airport totalling 1.8 million or an increase in 2.7% year on year as of September 2012 (BNE, 2012). ·         The company has a relatively strong but static online presence through its corporate website at www.bne.com.au where BNE customers can check on flight information, travel news in Brisbane, and access information on various travel related topics while in the airport ·         The airport has been at the forefront of social media as it recently became the first Australian airport to use Pinterest which has a reported 8.9 million views in the country in February 2012. This was it third social network after Facebook and Twitter.
Weaknesses	·         There is no effective internal communication that can link airport management to its business concessionaires (car rentals, duty free shops, restaurants and lounge operators, airlines booking offices)
Opportunities	·         Web 2.0 technologies have yet to be fully harnessed; ·         A stable and growing national economy that portends a sustained recovery from the global recession as evidenced by recent increases in passenger arrivals in the airport
Threats	·         The airport has little competition in the area other than those that function as alternate or feeder airports such as Sunshine Coast. Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Ballina/Byron Gateway and Lismore airports.

Table 2: PESTLE Analysis

PESTLE elements	Factors
Political	·         Healthy business relationships exist between the company and local Brisbane authorities as well as commercial firms engaged in concessionary business within the airport premises.
Economic	·         Strong macroeconomic fundamentals with rising GDP and improving unemployment rate ensure a local economy slowly recovering from the onslaught of the global recession over the last three years. ·         5.1% unemployment rate as of 2011, improving slightly from the 5.2% registered in 2010.  But among the youth sector (aged 15-24) unemployed stood at 11.6% during the same period. (Index Mundi 2012). ·         Brisbane is experiencing modest but stable growth in visitor arrivals which totalled 1.8 million for a year on year increase of 2.7% year as of September 2012 (BNE, 2012a).
Social	·         The airport has a thriving list of business concessions such as car rentals, restaurants and shops that together serve passengers while going through the airport. ·         It has a growing involvement in social networking groups such as Facebook, Twitter and recently joined Pinterest dedicated for online users who love or enjoy air travel (BNE, 2012b).
Technological	·         Strong internal IT infrastructure and development support for in-house application systems using existing computing and database platforms ·         There is a growing social media penetration rate among internet users and this can be harnessed more fully by the company ·         Cloud computing which is a form of IT outsourcing  when used from a 3rd party provider is emerging as the new way of supporting the business for improved economies of scale that effectively makes unnecessary the traditional continuous investments in hardware and software during system upgrades (Hogan, 2008).
Legal	·         Copyright violations increase with user-generated content in Web 2.0 (Ingram. 2010).  The issues revolve around managing user-developed or collaborated content and ensuring that the copyright of others is not infringed in the process. This often requires a more conscientious monitoring of critical social media content like images, music and video whose owners are known to enforce copyright ownership rights. ·         Social media often comes with personal information as in the case of user profiles and photos  in social networks and face the potential risk that such information are used without securing explicit permission from their owners. Web 2.0 implementors will have to exercise more diligence and care about protecting the privacy of individuals. (Thomson, 2008). ·         Web 2.0 content risks being compromised by malicious users who may post pornographic, licentious, hateful or racially derogatory materials.  Constant monitoring of the site can prevent such materials from defacing the site.
Environmental	·         The company has not highlighted its greening or eco-friendly efforts to general more support from greening enthusiasts among its passengers.  Further studies will be conducted in this area to identify areas for improvement and inclusion as an airport feature for its social media marketing efforts.