Blog Advertising: A win-win situation

Many of the readers of this blog will be doing their MBA, specialising in advertising and marketing. As you will find out in the next few years, one of the biggest challenges for the advertiser is to make sure that the 'ad is actually seen' by the Target Audience. Of course, you will then get into more refined targets like 'reaching out to your audience at the lowest cost per head' (CPM or Cost Per Thousand as the Media Planners call it).

It's possibly because of this reason that marketeers loved the internet - here was a way to reach out to a focussed audience. Weblogs or Blogs as they are called took this revolution a step further - Each blog is a potential media - while a single blog may not have the traffic of a larger portal, but it has its own loyal audience. Marketers get an option through blog advertising to reach out to their audience in a language that they preferred listening to. Advertisers also get to link back to their own websites from the blogposts, helping them get quality traffic directly onto their sites.

For bloggers like me, this provides with an option to monetize my efforts. A win-win situation for everyone, ain't it? Smorty.Com, acting as a bridge between advertisers and bloggers is a place to check out for - for both advertisers and for bloggers. It's a great opportunity for bloggers in that you can now actually make money off your blog. How much you end up making is entirely upto you - your earnings are a function of the opportunities you will get, which are proportional to the efforts you put into your blog.

I have been using Smorty for the past few months and what i liked about them was - 1. Service Quality and 2. Speed of Response. Besides they are amongst the fastest in terms of approval and payments. Highly Recommended from this blog.

Favourite B-School: Opinion Poll Results

I had been running this "My Favourite B-School" opinion poll on this blog for the past 3 months and it's time now to share the results with you.

A total of 413 MBA aspirants have taken part in this poll so far. (still running) The b-school at No.1 is not very surprisingly the IIMs ( the six IIMs clustered together) - the IIMs were chosen as the B-School of choice by 193 respondents, a little under half the total number of respondents. B-School Rank 2 is XLRI, Jamshedpur - with 57 votes. At no.3 is MICA, the specialised b-school for marketing communications in Ahmedabad. 'Others' make it to No.4, closely followed behind by FMS, Delhi with 30 votes. 20 students voted a non-Indian B-School as their preferred place to do an MBA.

Are you preparing for CAT 2007 or CAT 2008? Or are you amongst the few that are not looking at the IIMs but at the specialised b-schools like MICA, TISS or IRMA - do let us know your favourite b-school by participating in the poll.

Tackling the MOCK CAT 2007

It's that time of the year again, when CAT aspirants get ready to start tackling the battery of CAT-like tests administered by various coaching institutes across the country. For those of you preparing for CAT 2007 or XAT 2008 or any of the many other MBA Entrance Tests, here go a few suggestions:

1. These tests are important no doubt - whether you are taking at a centre or at home from your study material, but be careful. These tests are just that - tests. A test is supposed to help you evaluate where you stand, you get an idea of the yields of your preparation efforts and it also helps you identify your strengths & weaknesses. Once these objectives have been achieved, please move on ahead. Get back to your books and work on the deficiencies. Don't keep taking tests after tests. ( A maximum of 2 a week, i'd think )

2. Should you find after Test 1 that there are too many areas that you have no clue about, then the test has served its job. Go back to your basic material/fundamental books , Part 1 or Part A or whatever else you were using - immediately. Forget all about tests. First get your basics in place, because if that ain't there, even God may not be able to help you - so what can a test do?

3. Do spend some time evaluating your efforts, once you get the results. That's where the value of the test lies - remember these tests are only mock, so they are but stepping stones to the real thing.

4. While you will obviously work on your deficiencies, don't forget the strength areas completely. Keep doing a few questions from them from time to time and be in touch with them. Giving any topic a 2-3 month break is never a good idea.

5. Chill. It can do wonders!