Email is no more a standalone entity. Many online marketers have already integrated their email campaigns with other digital media channels. Since social media is not going to disappear anytime soon, it's just the right time to innovate, and take your email marketing campaign to the next level.

Interact with Your Email Subscribers
The social media fever continues to rise due to an increased conversation component that it leverages. Therer's no doubt that conversations can happen with your email messages as well. Online marketers only need to change their mindset and start looking at emails as also a means to interact with subscribers to enhance engagement.

Emails should not be a direct response marketing tool anymore. They must be combined with other digital messaging channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc) to add fuel to your campaigns. All it takes is a more effective management of subscribers' responses. The content messages that you receive from subscribers should be directed to the right department in your organization based on their different nature.

Plan an effective strategy to respond to every subscriber response. It's vital to match your content message with the immediate need of the subscriber. Relevancy and timeliness are always the biggest factors that will play an important role in fulfilling subscribersrs' expectations.

Personalization is Key
By personalizing emails, you can make them even more stable. Just because therer's no person-to-person interaction in email marketing, it doesn't mean you can't personalize those messages. Apart from collecting the basic subscriber information (name and email), you should try to know the interests, likes and dislikes of your email subscribers.

The better you know your subscribers, the more personalized email messages you will be able to create. Segment your subscribers on the basis of their demographics, interests, behavioral attributes etc. Start sending targeted messages to each subscriber group.

Use the Best Advocates (Email List) to Drive Social Momentum
Identify the loyal subscribers (or brand advocates) in your email list. Start interacting with them with a personalized approach. As soon as you get those best advocates to your social media pages, you have a surefire chance of driving social momentum among other users.

Email is not an adversary of social media. In fact, they can be easily integrated to deliver better results, loyalty and conversions. However, it's important to decide which social media tools you should actually integrate with your email marketing campaign to achieve success.

Social networks thrive on email messaging. Emails can be efficiently used to notify users about what's going on in your social network. Whether it's about status updates, followers or fans, you can always use emails to keep users well informed of regular transactions.

Unless you tie your email marketing to other digital messaging channels, you can never expect to create a powerful marketing plan. In an era of rapid socialization, fragmented conversations will lead you nowhere. By bringing together all these channels together, you can create a richer experience for your consumers, build long-term relationships and create brand advocates.

Are you ready to increase brand awareness, create loyal customers and generate more revenue by socializing emails?

We normally talk about search engine optimization (SEO) on this blog and how the changes to Google's algorithms can affect how you rank for certain keywords and keyword phrases, but another huge part of the equation comes from search engine marketing (SEM). This is when advertisers purchase ad spots on the search engine results page. Not surprisingly, we're seeing huge growth here.

According to a new report put out by eMarketer, spending on search advertising is expected to hit $19.51 billion in 2012. That's based on US spending alone and it represents a huge 27 percent growth compared to last year's figure of $15.36 billion. That's a lot of money and, not as you can likely expect, Google is leading the charge when it comes to scooping up that advertising revenue.

Part of this increase in spending is fueled by the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in London, as well as the US Presidential election, along with other major elections around the world. They're saying that Google will have a 77.9% share of that revenue for 2012, followed by Microsoft's Bing at 7%. The growth will slow over the next few years, but search ad spending will continue to rise.

And yes, Yahoo and AOL will be bringing up the rear with a combine share of barely over 5%, eroding down to even less by 2016. Google will be snatching up most of that, but Microsoft gets a small increase too. At least, that's what the predictions are saying.

What does this mean for all the SEOs in the audience? Getting higher rankings could prove even more valuable than ever before if advertisers are willing to spend that much more money for prime spots on the SERPs. Will you be shifting your focus from SEO to SEM? Or will you use some combined effort between the two?

Google updates its search ranking algorithm as many as 500 times every year. Its Panda updates are a part of this continued effort. All Google wants is to provide web users with a superior quality searching experience. Since junk or low quality content is produced continuously, Google's Panda is ready to attack at the interval of every 5-7 weeks. The recent one, called Panda 3.2 algorithm update, is only the beginning of several updates that Google plans to do this year. But are you really geared up to survive these attacks?

Creating a healthy web eco-system is Google's main goal. Since Google's the world's most preferred search engine, it can never afford to dissatisfy users that use it to find solutions (results) to their problems (queries).

In short, Google wants you to create high quality websites. Here are a couple of questions that will help you define a high quality website.

Does your website have multiple articles on a similar topic (with little keyword variations)?
Do users really trust your website?
Is the content on your website well-edited?
Do the articles on your website really help users?
Does your website have articles that users can recommend to others?
Do you display a lot of ads on your website?
Do you share insightful analysis and interesting information on your site?
How would your content look, if it appears in print?

If you don't want Google's Panda to attack or hit your website, you should never ignore the issues that the above-mentioned questions throw light upon.

The second important point is to satisfy your target audience's needs. No matter what business goals you want to achieve, you can never do it at the cost of making your target audiences unhappy. In fact, you should focus on creating content that provides quick solutions to their everyday problems.

And the only way to fulfill your audience's requirements is to find out who they are. Know their interests, aspirations, likes, dislikes and other behavioral attributes. Unless you know what an ideal customer for your business look like, you won't be able to offer what they want from you. Do the profiling right away!

To make sure you don't get hit by the Google's Panda, you need to keep a close watch on the analytics of your website. Log in to your Google analytics account to get the current picture of where your site stands. Metrics like time on site, bounce rate, exit rate, visitor loyalty can tell you a lot as to whether web users really find your website helpful and trust you as a valuable resource. If you have some serious usability issues with your website, fix them as quickly as possible.

If you want to escape Panda attacks in future, you should start building a strong community of followers (and advocates) around your brand. That's one of the most important pieces of advice you can use. Though it takes time and effort, building a community of loyal followers can become your shield to ward off the sudden effects of a Google Panda update.

Don't wait or it can be too late!

Was your website ever Panda-slapped? Let's hear the story in the comment section below.

There are certain tools that just about every website owner is bound to use. You're probably using Google Analytics, for example, to keep track of your visitor demographics, traffic sources, and so on. Google Webmaster Tools is another one of those go-to utilities that just about everyone uses. And it just got a little bit better.

Barry Schwartz over at SE Roundtable has put up a post telling us that Webmaster Tools now comes with a couple of new features. One of them is that you can test your sitemaps before officially submitting them. Before, you had to submit the sitemap and wait to see if any issues arise. Now, you can do that ahead of time.

And it's really easy to use too. After logging into your Google Webmaster Tools account, get into Sitemaps from the Site Configuration link as you normally would. Then, click on the button at the top right with "add/test sitemap" and enter the appropriate URL. Instead of clicking on the blue button with "submit sitemap," click on the grey "test sitemap" buton.

Give Google a few moments to do its thing and then it'll tell you that the test are complete. Click to view the results and it'll give you a quick summary, telling you about the content in the sitemap and if there are any errors detected. This can be a real timesaver and it makes sure that your submitted sitemap is error-free right from the get-go!

Have you tried this new feature? What else would you change in Webmaster Tools to make it better?

It's been confirmed that Google updated its Panda on January 18 this month. Webmasters are already busy discussing the effects of Google's recent Panda 3.2 algorithmic update, which was actually halted last year due to the holiday season. Google tweeted in December that they were not going to update their Panda since it was holiday time. Certainly, it was like a holiday present for webmasters around the world.

Though Google officials said that this is only a minor update (a data refresh), webmasters noticed alterations in their search rankings. The recent Panda update is only one of 500 ranking algorithmic changes that Google makes every year. So, you can hope to see more of such updates, usually at the interval of every 5-8 weeks.

Previous Panda Update Schedule
Counting the recent one, Google has updated its Panda ten times till now. Let's have a look at all of these updates between 2011 and 2012.

Panda Update 1.0 : Feb. 24, 2011
Panda Update 2.0 : April 11, 2011
Panda Update 2.1 : May 10, 2011
Panda Update 2.2 : June 16, 2011
Panda Update 2.3 : July 23, 2011
Panda Update 2.4 : August 12, 2011
Panda Update 2.5 : September 28, 2011
Panda Update 2.5.1 : October 19, 2011
Panda Update 2.5.2 : October 13, 2011
Panda Update 2.5.3 : October 9, 2011
Panda Update 3.1 : November 18, 2011
Panda Update 3.2 : January 18, 2012

Google has declared time and again that it strives to provide a superior quality search experience to users. All these Panda algorithm updates focus on enhancing the Google rankings of high quality sites, while poor or low quality websites are pushed down the SERPs.

What a Few Webmasters Noticed
Though I didn't notice any impact on my own sites, there are webmasters who pointed out rises or drops in their organic search traffic. Many webmasters said that they retained the traffic that was lost during November Google Panda update last year. Many declared a 30% - 40% increase in their daily organic traffic. There are others (including me) who didn't notice any big change though.

Looking for Panda Survival Tips?
Many more Panda updates will be your way this year. You really need to make sure that these updates by Google don't do any collateral damage to your website organic traffic. If your website was Panda-slapped, given below are few essential tips that you can follow.

Diversify your website traffic
Use actionable KPIs to calculate success
Devote time to building a community around your brand
Fix the usability issues on your website quickly
Conduct a content audit (and remove useless content)
Say a firm 'No' to low quality link building
Understand that good quality content is still the king

If a higher percentage of your website's traffic comes from Google's organic searches, you need to become even more vigilant. Start implementing the necessary changes to your website right away, because therer's no guarantee that the next Panda algorithmic update will also be minor one.