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International businesses are keen to partner with Indian businesses and grow together, but there is a problem – a big problem! They are mostly ineffective in contacting the Indian businesses and securing a prompt response back!
Catch the Internet Wave!
As of January 2009, according to Internet World Stats, roughly 22% of the 6.6 billon population have access to the Internet and is growing roughly at 300% yearly! This includes roughly 253 million in China, 220 million in USA, 94 million in Japan, 60 million in India and 53 million in Germany. Indian small and medium size organizations therefore need to learn to make use of this medium effectively – first by understanding the Internet culture, then by developing a good web presence and finally by creating regular web profiles on b2b exchanges to draw traffic and interest to their website, products, services, resources and opportunities.
Understand the Internet Culture!
There is a distinct cultural difference between how American and European countries do international business. Their process starts with research (mainly online), initial email contacts, follow up telephone calls, site visits and then finally checking customer references. It is very likely that an executive in an US business searches online for a particular kind of international company, research it online and then email the international business with a brief introduction. But there is a problem with this mode of communication for Indian businesses! Though, India is recognized as an IT power house, web presence for most small and medium size Indian businesses, state and local governments and associations and chamber of commerce organizations is low. Therefore, it is virtually impossible to locate and get in touch with Indian organizations’ via the web / Internet route. Even if an Indian organization has a website, there is always another major problem with the “Contact Us” email address or form – it is rarely monitored. International businesses can keep on sending email messages but will rarely get a response back from Indian websites. This really frustrates international businesses!
In-source Business Website Development!
Establishing a website can be costly or cost effective depending on how organizations’ structure their web site development. Rather than contracting it out with IT companies, I recommend business owners use simple but sophisticated web site development and hosting tools and manage their websites in-house. This gives organizations increased control, flexibility, expertise and involvement in this critical collaboration and communication medium. Have a look at our site at Launchdream.com which was built in a few hours. This was developed using one of the best online web site development and hosting tool that costs US$15/month. If you would like to try the web site tool, just click on “Build Website” in the left top corner of our site and register your own account and build your presence today.
Monitor Business Web Traffic Regularly!
Once you have a website, make sure to use tools like Google Webmaster to track who is visiting your website and from where. You may find very few visitors. Having a web site is not the “be all” of Internet – it is just the starting point. Web site is just like a “brochure” in a stack of billions of other brochures unless your site is indexed by search engines, ranks high up in users’ search results on popular search engines and actually has a high number of unique visitors visiting your website regularly. Most small and medium size organizations do not fall in this category. Why? Typically because these websites have few incoming web links for being discovered and indexed by major search engines and have little fresh, relevant content in presentable formats to continue attracting repeat visitors. Thus, even is you spend a lot on you web presence there is no guarantee that your business will be found on the Internet. So what do you do? Add fresh, relevant content regularly on your site, this will encourage others to link to your site. Additionally, start making regular postings or “web profiles” on online b2b exchanges and other high profile business sites to draw traffic to your site.
Post Regular Web Profiles:
Online B2B Exchanges are like information shopping mall. Newer B2B Exchanges provide templates or forms for businesses to complete and submit – so all resulting web profiles postings are complete and comprehensive. Customer submissions are not only available on the exchange for searching and viewing for a long duration but are also fed as RSS feed for global subscribers. RSS allows you to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites you are interested in and subscribed to without needing to join the site's email newsletters. Such sites also send “pings” to news aggregators sites like Technorati, Blo.gs, Weblogs.com, Yahoo, BlogRolling, Google and others informing them that new content is available on the exchange for indexing and viewing. These aggregator sites then publicize your web profile further on the Internet! For the cost of one small newspaper advertisement, one can secure yearly membership in high quality business exchanges. Business exchanges are especially critical for organizations that do not have their own website. Have a look at Opportunities for Business and also view this video (http://www.b2bexchange.org/storage/video/B2BExchange3.wmv) as an example. To register for your free complimentary account on a B2Bexchange.org go to this address today: http://www.b2bexchange.org/complimentary-account/.
Build a Virtual Business Community:
While it is good to have individual organizations’ develop websites and web profiles, there is even greater good in getting your local membership organizations like investment agencies, business associations, chamber of commerce, technology councils and others get their organization profile, opportunities and resources listed online on international B2B Exchanges. Once, such membership organizations go online they become very familiar with the Internet and become instrumental in getting their offline members online. This creates a virtual online community which is a replica of your local business community. Such online community presence increases brand awareness of local regions on the global Internet increasing investment, partnerships and ultimately economic development potential for your whole region. Many times B2B Exchanges offer affiliate relationships which allow local membership organizations to share revenues with the exchanges. As an example refer to http://www.b2bexchange.org/become-affiliate/.
Conclusion:
Internet utilization increases business opportunities. An effective combination of your very own, internally managed website with postings on b2b exchange sites will get your business presence on the web going. So why not try it today?
