Steve Jobs Retires, What Next?

Just today morning i read the news about the resignation of Apple's iconic CEO Steve Jobs. I have never purchased any Apple product so far, probably will go for them in future. In fact the itch to get one has actually increased :) But anyway nothing is permanent in this world and everyone has to move on from one place to the another, from one position to the another.

Here's the copy of Steve's resignation letter which many people are terming as "iQuit" referring to the highly popular i-series of Apple products.

CUPERTINO, Calif.–August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.

Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Everyone is unique in this world and so is Steve Jobs. Hope Tim Cook brings his own aura and freshness to the Apple world and keep on bringing great products in the future too. Goodbye Steve!

Is Twitter Advertising Really Valuable for Marketers?

Twitter has been quite aggressive in the past few months to prove that it is worth the valuation it has got in the recent times. Its valuation has soared to $8 billion recently which has made it many a critic’s target as it is still to come with any profitable business. According to an article published in Ad Age, by June 2011, it has partnered with more than 600 companies for their advertising campaigns.

The  article also shares a summary of advertising campaigns of four different brands: Unilever’s Magnum ice cream, CMT Music Awards, Zuji  Australia and RadioShack. All these brands have definitely got the results but if you see closely, the results are in terms of just Twitter metrics. These brands have got lot of followers, retweets and mentions of hashtags but when it comes to the earning call, there are no results in terms of direct impact on increase in sales.

According to me, Twitter advertising in its present form is not compatible with the business goals of companies. Twitter advertising will ultimately be of worth to marketers or businesses only if they can incorporate some elements which lead to increase in sales and which can be tracked through some dedicated dashboard.

What do you think Twitter needs to incorporate to enhance its advertising solution?

What is More Important: Social Media Tool or the Idea?

Social media has caught a fancy of brand managers and marketers all across the world and India is no exception. But what has been seen by various agencies is that their clients rush to them with their own solutions rather than sharing their problems. Clients are more interested in creating an iPad app or a Facebook page or a YouTube video and so on and so forth, i.e. They are having their own perceptions that a YouTube video or an iPad app  will help them promote their brand or to meet their brand’s objective.

The reality is that they are not aware of the problems they are facing. Rather than asking the agency to this or that they should identify their problem areas and then share it with their agency. After going through your problem areas, your agency may suggest you to start an online community or a Facebook page or a blog or combination of different social media channels.

So the point is Idea is more important than the social media tools. According to your Ideas or solutions, you should choose the appropriate social media tools to implement those ideas. Again just by starting a Facebook page, a twitter profile or any other social networking presence is not going to serve you as there is no backing of any constructive objectives or ideas.

Start with objectives, define your problem areas and then implement the ideas you have on appropriate social media tools.

How Social Media is Adding Value as an Educational Tool

Social media is a great way to be aware about what's happening in the world around us. It is also a fantastic way to learn new things from our peers and online friends. It is no surprise then that social media can play a crucial role in the education in schools, colleges or universities. There are many advocates but more detractors to the role of social media in education. But i am of the positive view regarding the role of social media in education.

Image - swilmarth (via Flickr)

I had done a post earlier where i discussed 2 ways social media is contributing to the imparting of education. I would like to carry forward that discussion in this post. I was looking for some Indian examples where social media is being used actively for education but couldn't find it on Google. Probably an offline search is needed to find out. You are welcome to share any examples, Indian or Non-Indian in the comment box below.

Although i did find out one facebook page the purpose of which is to encourage fans to use their knowledge and skills to create and design products. The focus of page is on using electronics for bringing  joy and freedom to persons with disability and their families. On the way they also learn electronics. This is a noble cause indeed. If you to this page you can see members helping each other on various aspects of electronics.


Similarly i came across a very interesting collaborative online wiki maintained by the Singapore Management University (SMU) which mainly exists for the purpose of education of students. This is a very ambitious project which is updated regularly and shares the information on digital media in various countries around the world.

The best part of social media as an educational medium is that it encourages openness, sharing, collaboration & updating of information in the real time. The children in the modern age are growing with gadgets and modern technology all around them.

Companies like Educomp are encouraging audio-visual techniques along with educational softwares to 26,000 schools and 15 millionlearners and educators across the world! In that scenario it would be great to introduce social media for the learning purpose too.

I was reading about a school in New Jersey (USA) whose principal has nearly 12,300 Twitter followers and he is openly advocating the usage of social media for educational purpose in his school. To him social media is an enabler. We have to enable young students to use this medium in a productive way otherwise just by banning them, they may turn wayward and waste a lot of their time off school in unproductive activities.

What are your views on social media as an educational tool? Please share your thoughts or any examples you know of in the comment box below.

4 Social Media Tips From My Friends

Today i asked a question on twitter that what is the one tip you would like to give some one regarding social media marketing? I received replies from 4 of my friends on twitter. Here are they in the order i received them:

Image: respres (via Flickr)

#1. Anshuman

He suggested Patience as the key. And i agree with him. To be successful in any form of art, patience is required. And certainly social media marketing is an art which is being refined with every passing day.

#2. Gaurav

He laid stress on the need of your audience. According to him instead of talking what you 'want to', start talking about what your audience wants to listen. This is indeed a very valid point. Understanding your audience and communicating with them in their voice is the essence of marketing.

#3. Gagan

He had a suggestion more on a philosophical note but very much valid. He suggested to stay a social media marketing 'learner' rather than portray yourself as a social media marketing 'Guru'. Looking at the number of social media 'Gurus' gushing out from all sides, his suggestion only seems to be valid to me.

#4. Patrick

He had a very nice point to make that a social media marketer needs to be honest and transparent in his dealings with his audience as there's nothing worse as a customer or client than being purposely misinformed.  Adding to that i feel dishonesty can also bring a doom or bad PR for the brand, especially in the age of social media where news spread faster than you can think.

There are tons of tips related to social media, which can be shared. Do you have any? Please share in the comment box below.

The Real Value of Social Media: Engagement

Engagement has been the key element of human existence since time immemorial. Without engagement it is simply not possible to conceive of various institutions, families & fabric and culture around the world. It is due to engagement and the need of sharing which has led to so much advancement in technology and human capabilities. Social media marketing is no different. The very word 'Social' involves engagement. Actually engagement is what makes social media unique to the traditional media.

Traditional Approach

Earlier brands used to craft a message or commercial to be displayed on TV, Newspapers and Radio and it was static as your customers were not able to interact with the brand, although they kept on repeating their messages again and again so that their customers and prospects have a strong brand recall. In fact traditional media is still relevant and i strongly believe in the marketing mix where traditional and new media both play an important role hand-in-hand.

New Approach

The point is traditional media has certain limitations, like customers can't interact with other customers directly and not even with the brand. Social media has been a great boon as far as democratizing the conversations is concerned. From 'one-to-many', now the mode of communication is 'one-to-many' + 'many-to-many'. Brands' role is now to participate and engage rather than just broadcast and sit back to see the increase in sales.

Present Scenario

These days customers have so much power that they can go to any social network or customer forum or even start their own websites or blogs to share their grieving.  Especially on twitter news spread like wildfire. One just have to look at the post by Shrinidhi Hande on his bad experience with Mahindra Holidays. He wrote a detailed post on the discrepancies in Mahindra's service and warned readers to avoid availing any service from them. This post was written in february 2007, and even now after 4 years you can see the comments rolling in. This is the power of the medium. One just has to search for 'x brand sucks' and there you can see a detailed list of crimes committed by a brand. :)

The moral of the story is you may delete negative comments on your online properties but you don't have any power over 3rd party social media properties. So, it is better to engage and handle negative criticism as soon as possible.

The Real Value

The real value of social media is engagement as it brings you customer insights, creates relationships with your customers and ultimately increase in sales. So, rather than running after number of fans or followers on facebook and twitter, go for building valuable relationships. Help your customers, participate in their conversation. That will create a real value for you.

Google Plus a New Rival to Facebook: Will it Be Successful?

Google launched Google Plus (Google+) a new social network from it's stable which seems to be very promising from the initial usage experience. Right now it is invitation based & i got invitation from a friend yesterday morning. Here's a view of my profile on Google+:

Circles

Circles are an interesting way of grouping together the people in your network to form number of meaningful clusters which enables you to share only that much information which you want to share with them. Like you can have separate circles for your work place, family, friends etc and the good thing is that others can see only that you have added them to some circle but in which one, they can't know.

Sparks

Sparks is a very good introduction which displays random content from across the web (over which google has a strong hold). The content is categorized based upon different interest areas. You can create a new spark based upon your interest area or you can see the regular sparks shown by Google. Sharing of content (blog posts, articles & videos) from sparks with your circles is very easy & happens in a flash. I personally feel they should add Google reader feature or some customization option in the sparks tab to make it more useful.

Huddle

So Google+ includes Huddle, a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know what’s going on, right this second. Group messaging was first made popular by blackberry messenger service (BBM) from RIM but bringing that to the web is a good feature although i don't rate it as an innovation. Already this kind of chat can be done on facebook closed groups.

Hangout

Hangout is a great feature which lets you to have a video chat with up to 10 people at the same time & it has a very nice "narrative detection" element which automatically detects the active user who is speaking to the other members & thus his video is relayed to all other members in the real time.

This comes into action for the video chat with more than 2 people. The experience is smooth & there's hardly any lag. I rate this feature as the most powerful yet on Google Plus and it certainly adds a very element to social media.

Mobile

I haven't tried out the Google+ mobile feature yet but it seems to be an interesting feature after looking at the post by RWW it seems that experience of using Google on android phones is really good. Like while you're snapping pictures, and with your permission, Google+ adds your photos to a private album in the cloud. This way they're always available across your devices—ready to share as you see fit.

Usage Experience

Google+ is fantastic in terms of features but facebook users will not find it so easy to accustom themselves to it. It took me few hours to get hold of all the features. But the platform is really promising & can add a new dimension of social networking. Account creation being invitation only created a lot of buzz yesterday all around on the web.Although it will be rolled out soon to all the web users soon.

Did you get the invite? :)

5 Steps to Monetise Your Blog: For Newbies

Blogging or webloging is a way to express your thoughts in public. You want others to know about your ideas. Blogging has many advantages, it can establish you as a thought leader, can get you a job, conference invitations & can even make money for you. There are some people who start blogging only to make money which is absolutely right while others have no such intention, it is only there for their intellectual development. Making money through blogging is an art and even i am trying to learn this art. Yes, this art can be learned by reading the posts of fellow bloggers who have created great content on this topic.

Best Practices for Newbies

#1. Blog Design

Don't create very shiny & cluttered blog. Simplicity is best. Even if you have a clean white background & few colorful icons & widgets it looks better than fully filled magazine style blog.

#2. Frequency of Posts

Spend at least initial four months creating some interesting and relevant content related to your niche. Ideally you should have at least 16 posts in the first 4 months i.e. 1 post every week. Then you can increase your blogging frequency by publishing 2 posts every week.

#3. Building Relationship

It is important for a newbie to build relationship with the fellow bloggers. You can create a blogroll of interesting bloggers in your niche and display the blogroll widget on your blog home page. Also, link to their relevant posts in your blog posts in the right context. Don't forget to read and leave relevant comments on their posts. This way they will notice you & even link back to your posts bringing in more traffic to your blog.

#4. Ads Management

I would recommend starting with google adsense as it is time tested & easy to begin with. Also, google doesn't allow more than 3 ads per page and 3 ads per post as per their current policies. It's a good idea to start with ads with size of 468x60 as they are not intrusive and they should be placed at the bottom of the post. This prevents your blog to look cluttered & gives importance to the content too.


#5. Tracking Performance

A newbie should make it a regular practice to track the performance of his ads on the daily basis. It gives a fair amount of idea which posts are working, what kind of content draws more traffic and thus vital clicks. You can go on improving your blog based upon on your learning.

What do you think of these steps? Do you have more ideas? Please share in the comment box below.

Analysis of Volkswagen India's Social Media Practice: Case Study

India is a very important market for various automobile manufacturers whether Indian or foreign. According to a study by Booz & Company, the Indian Automobile industry will overtake the European market and is slated to become the world’s fourth largest by 2015 and will be selling almost 6 million units annually by 2020. This speaks of the interest shown by International brands in the Indian market as they are struggling in mature markets to sell their automobiles. Here, i am going to take up the case of Volkswagen India regarding their social media practice, what they are doing right or wrong.

Right now, Volkswagen India mainly has a presence across four social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & LinkedIn. Apart from that they have dedicated sites for their 'Innovations for Everyone' and 'Think Blue campaign' campaigns. The important aspect of Volkswagen India's strategy is a long term approach to build loyal community and the use of all the marketing channels: TV, Radio, Print, Outdoor & Online to leverage their promotional campaigns. There are two other brands of Volkswagen in India: Audi & Skoda, but i'll stick to the analysis of their social media practice.

Facebook

Volkswagen has grown its facebook fan page organically to a community nearing the count of 25,000. As far as wall communication is concerned, they are engaging with their fans in a responsible manner by replying to their queries, appreciating the feedback, running the contests etc.

Surprisingly they are missing the welcome tab as in the case of Volkswagen International! They have a twitter stream as a landing tab which looks very cluttered although they may be trying to portray a human image with this to show how do they interact with their followers on twitter. But they should get a well designed welcome tab with a introductory video & some crucial information for a homely feel to a new fan.

Another weakness i found was on their feedback tab where most of the feedback by customers is negative & astonishingly there is no participation by the brand to handle this negative criticism! Also some people are spamming their feedback tab with the repetition of the same problem and there is no moderation of such feedback. Either don't keep such a tab or if you have to keep then solve the problems of your customers.

Twitter

Volkswagen's twitter presence is not that great as compared to its facebook page but still they are doing commendable job over there by being highly interactive with their followers and retweeting the positive tweets. They also try to solve the problems faced by their followers related to the vehicles owned by them, which is a good practice.

Another good practice i noticed is that they have identified the owners of Volkswagen vehicles on twitter & have added them to the respective lists of different vehicles. They use these lists to keep a track of their customers & occasionally inform them about any new initiatives or offers.

But what i found missing on their twitter profile is that they don't favorite any positive tweets. In fact they haven't favorited even a single tweet! They should immediately start doing this because it serves as a real time repository of real testimonials made by people on twitter in public. The stream of such favorited tweets can then be integrated on their site.

Youtube

As far as Youtube efforts of Volkswagen India are concerned, i would rate it 50-50 because as far as the distribution of videos among influential bloggers and other news media channels is concerned they have done it well and these videos have admirable number of views but they lack as far as leveraging their dedicated Youtube channel is concerned.

They should take a cue from Youtube channel of Volkswagen International who have total views of more than 57 million till date!. They should cross promote the videos of their dedicated channel on other online platforms and should provide some incentives for people to subscribe to their channel.

LinkedIn

I was highly impressed upon seeing the way Volkswagen India has utilised LinkedIn company page. Since company pages is a new feature from the stable of LinkedIn, very few companies have actually have taken advantage of it & Volkswagen is one of those. They have listed 7 of their vehicles on LinkedIn so far & have got staggering 2772 recommendations till the time of writing this post!

This is a powerful area where it can get a lot of benefit due to such a large number of recommendations. You never know when some executive on LinkedIn sees a recommendation by a person who happens to be his LinkedIn connection & he makes the decision to buy that car! Or there can be bulk orders too.

Special Campaigns

Volkswagen also started two campaigns at different times in India. 'Innovations for Everyone' was launched in 2010 while another campaign 'Think Blue' was launched recently in 2011. Both these campaigns were launched with much fanfare as an integrated marketing campaign across all the online & offline channels which created a lot of buzz for them.

People submit their ideas on the dedicated sites of these campaigns & they get voted for their innovation by other participants and the person with highest number of votes is declared the winner. Some of these ideas are passed on to the product team to study their feasibility of being introduced among the upcoming vehicles.

This shows the crowd-sourcing capability of Volkswagen India. I would rate these campaigns as highly successful and there is lot to learn from their success for marketers. Here's the highest viewed video on their dedicated channel so far regarding the innovation for everyone campaign.

What do you think of Volkswagen's social media practice? Share your ideas in the comment box below.

Social Media is Not FREE!

Usually many social media agencies have trouble convincing their clients on a very basic point that social media is not free. Yes, it is true. Social media is not free and i'll explain why. Clients usually have an opinion that social media is a totally free domain which doesn't require much marketing budget. Hire few interns & the matter is resolved, or hire some mom & pop agency and pay them some fix amount every month to manage your accounts. But this is a totally wrong approach.

Tremendous amount of information is being generated online by millions of users worldwide. A large brand can have millions of mentions around the world while a smaller brand can have few thousands. In that scenario, larger brands have no escape from using some high end analytics tools to listen about their brand & thus act upon the information in a timely fashion. While smaller brands can use some free tools to listen like Google Alerts or Twitter Search but investment is still required in terms of skilled social media marketers, salaries and time. Apart from that advertisements on social networks like Facebook & LinkedIn is a big plus looking at the way specific targeting can be done which is not possible in other mediums.

Social media networks are free to join because they will not expand without being freely available. And they earn money using customer or brand driven advertisements. Now, all kinds of brands can start their official accounts on these different social networks free of cost but as mentioned before, to manage those online properties one requires skilled manpower (who need industry standard salaries/perks) and an ongoing investment of time. For instance, Ching's Secret has a team of over 30 people managing their twitter & facebook accounts and at the same time they have integrated social media with ORM & CRM with nearly 65% of the marketing budget allocated for social media marketing.

So, in a nutshell, social media cost involves:
a) Cost of social media analytics tools like Radian6 or upgrading to premium version of free tools.
b) Cost of social media marketers.
c) Investment of time.
d) Cost of advertisements on social platforms like facebook, twitter etc.

What's your opinion about cost of social media? Share in the comment box below.

Social Media ROI: The Right Approach & Ways to Track It

In any kind of business, ROI (Return On Investment) is a must. And it is a common sense that whatever you invest in your business, you must get better return for it. And social media is no different. Social media marketers have found it tough to measure the ROI in the traditional sense (X-Y/Y, where X is gross profit & Y is marketing investment) but it is actually possible to measure the ROI of social media campaigns. But one additional aspect to ROI of social media apart from the financial aspect is that there is tremendous number of customer insights, brand building & other non-financial but very important aspects which are gained through social media.

The Right Approach

Brands should not approach social media just from the financial ROI perspective, it is absolutely correct to expect increase in sales from social media campaigns but this is only a one side of the coin. The other side of the coin i.e. non-financial aspect is also very crucial. So, they should include both these aspects in their social media ROI framework. This is the right way to look into social media returns.

What to Track in Financial ROI:

#1. Increase in sales

One of the best ways to track the sales is to use the combination of URL shortener and some form of a “cookie” to attach a campaign to a lead. Hootsuite can be used to integrate Google Analytics into their URL shortener for a seamless transition & tracking of sales. Also customised proprietary URL shorteners can be used which is helpful for branding purpose. The most reliable way to do this is to place a “cookie” on the user’s machine with the campaign name for the social media channel that generated the click. Dell has done this in a beautiful way and have generated sales worth millions of dollars on twitter. Another worthy mention here is Blendtec whose sales quintupled due to their highly successful “Will It Blend” Youtube videos.

#2. Reduction in cost

Brands can start with creating a report of their existing expenses for customer relationship management (CRM), recruitment of potential candidates, marketing/advertising/PR, market research & product design. Earned media is another aspect which can be worth millions of dollars of free promotion for a brand. Now compare this with the report you prepare after integrating social media into your marketing mix. You will be surprised to see the reduction in cost in all these aspects. Social media is not free but certainly it reduces the cost to a large extent. Asian Pacific Breweries did a great job on social media while launching their Guinness brand in Singapore which resulted in 21% surge in their sales and USD$ 220,000 worth of earned media!

#3. Increase in Loyalty of Customer

Loyalty is all about emotional connect of customers with the brand. And emotional connect can be built very easily on social media as compared to other mediums. The direct impact of Loyalty is on the customer's lifetime value. Deeper the loyalty, longer will be the lifetime value of the customer and hence the increase in sales. Loyalty can be created by building a community around your brand. Castrol India has created a community called 'Castrol Cricket' to engage their customers around cricket & castrol experience. Similarly Sunsilk has done a very good job of creating a 'Sunsilk Gang of Girls' community for young girls who happen to be their largest chunk of customers. The calculation of customer lifetime value can be done in the traditional way

What to Track in Non-financial ROI:

#1. Word of mouth for your Brand

It has been proved in various surveys & research reports that people don't trust the direct advertisements from brands as much as they trust in advocacy by their friends or testimonials by consumers available online. So tracking the WOM becomes very important as effort should be made to nullify the negative & amplify the positive WOM. This can be done by listening on paid tools like Radian6 and Alterian SM2 or by using free tools like Google Alerts to notify you of new mentions online, and searching on Twitter for key terms to see who's tweeting about you. Also features like 'Tell a Friend' should be introduced on your site that tracks who's referring your product to others. Social networking buttons like Facebook Like/Share, Retweet, Google +1 & LinkedIn etc should also be integrated on your websites & blogs which makes it easier for your users to share and also gives a fair amount of idea what is being shared about you online & how much.

#2. Sentiment of your brand

Sentiment analysis of a brand should be done on the regular basis to know whether the brand mentions are positive, negative or neutral. This provides insights to brands regarding any shortcomings for which they are being bashed upon on social media, which they need to overcome. This can be done using free tools like Social Mention and Twitter Sentiment or paid tools like Alterian SM2 & Radian6. Here's a very good piece on sentiment analysis. If the positive sentiment increases over time, consider it as a positive return on investment.

#3. Customer Insights

Social media provides a very good opportunity to do market research directly where the customers are. By running a survey or asking relevant questions on social platforms, brands can get really valuable insights about their customer demography, interests, wants, lifestyle etc. Even crowdsourcing can be used to create/change your brand logos or asking your customers what new products/services they would like to avail etc. This also brings in a sense of ownership among the customers. On Fastrack's Facebook page users comment on the merchandise and the company tweaks it accordingly. This saves it the money, engages the users as well as provides interesting insights in a quick time. Using Facebook insights, running poll on Facebook questions, asking your customers on Twitter or Facebook pages etc are some ways to start garnering customer insights.

As per experts like David Armano ROI is separate from Metrics! And i certainly agree with him. He shared a real life example of raising money online for some cause and according to him, Metrics included his number of twitter followers and the amount of re-tweets as well as blog views & ROI was the dollar amount raised via paypal divided by his time spent in activity.

What would you add to the list? Let me know in the comment box below.

10 Ways to Crack Facebook Edge Rank

Facebook edge rank has catched the fascination of social media marketer since past few months. Lot of discussions have happened & numerous blog posts written on how to optimize your facebook page wall posts to ensure it reaches to as wider audience as possible. For those who are not aware, your posts on facebook fan page are not displayed to all of your fans even if all of them are live on facebook at the moment of posting the content. How many of your total fans will actually see your post in their 'Top News' tab is determined by an algorithm known as facebook edge rank which mainly consists of 3 components: Affinity (Does the user interact with you often?), Weight (How interactive are the engagements with the post?) & Time decay (How long ago was the post done?).

Image Credit: Likeable.com

Here i will discuss 10 ways using which one can crack facebook edge rank:

AFFINITY

#1. Ongoing Engagement

There are many facebook page managers who wonder why the engagement on their pages is so less. Why only a small percentage of total fans is actually liking or replying to the posts. In some cases it is even less than 0.001%! The reason is many companies run initial contests or offers to seduce the users to like their facebook page but eventually stop engaging them expecting that they will keep on liking & commenting on their posts. The reality is majority of those fans become fan only to enter the contest or get some freebies but if you can keep them engaged with timely contests & interesting posts they will be hooked with your brand.

#2. User Generated Content

One very good way to keep the affinity level high of your fans high is to allow & encourage them to upload their pictures. Also encourage them to tag those pictures with their facebook friends and get them liked & commented upon by them. Occasional contests can be launched around this aspect where the fans who get maximum likes or comments on their uploaded pictures are declared the winners.



WEIGHT

#3. Post Interesting & Relevant Content

It is important to generate original content related to your domain which can be in the form of blogs. Content from your blogs can be posted about twice a week as more than that your fans can get overwhelmed & may unlike your page. Also plan your content in advance. It can be a mix of Poll, Quiz, Humor, Debate, Case Study and News/Interesting Article etc each on different days. Better the content, higher will be the participation & thus it will enhance the edge rank.

#4. Ask Thought Provoking Questions

It is very important to ask thought provoking questions to your page audience as this is one aspect which brings in participation from the audience mainly in the form of 'comments' & of course 'likes' (Comments have the higher weight than likes) which goes on increasing the edge rank. At the same time, it is important to avoid questions asking for simple Yes/No answers which may increase edge rank for the time being but put off your audience in the long run.

#5. Use Rich Media

Every action by the fans on your facebook page has its own weight. For instance Comment has higher weightage than a like as mentioned in the above point. Similarly, pictures have higher weight than videos or links. That is why it is important to use rich media like interesting & relevant images, videos & links in your posts. This increases the edge rank of your posts.



TIME DECAY

#6. Timing It Right

Usually most of the brands post content during the office hours i.e. 9-5. But the truth is maximum number of fans log on or check their facebook accounts when they are away from office or are at home, which are off hours. So, plan & schedule your content for posting during outside work hours. It has been found in a recent research that brands which post content outside of normal business hours have 20% higher engagement rates on their posts! And naturally higher engagement will push up the edge rank of your posts.

#7. Keep The Discussions Alive

In most of the cases once the post has been done on their fan pages, brands don't care with the what their fans are responding. All they care about is the number of likes & comments, which is a wrong approach. Although number of likes & comments are important but it is not the primary agenda. It is the outcome of the right approach, which is engagement & benefiting your fans. Ching's Secret is a very good example of how to pursue the fans' discussion and to participate & engage with them in a constructive way to the very end till the discussion dies on its own. More the life of some post, higher will be its edge rank.

#8. Cover Current Events

One of the ways to increase the edge rank in terms of time decay is to post around some interesting current affairs. Amul does it very well in India but they primarily do it on offline media. Still there is a community driven Amul facebook fan page which updates the community about the latest creatives of Amul. MTV India is also known to create interesting posts on their facebook page around current affairs.

METRICS

#9. Use Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights provide interesting data related to your users and the content which you post. This gives you a tremendous amount of opportunity to know about your user demographics as well as which content is working, when it is working and so on. There is no limit to the improvements which can brought upon by acting upon the facebook insights of your page.

#10. Use Edgerank Checker

Brands can also use absolutely free tool Edgerank Checker which gives a fair amount of Idea as in what is your page's edge rank in a certain period. It also suggests which are the days when you have the best or the worst edge rank and on which days you get the maximum or least new fans on your page. It also grades pages based upon edge rank as follows:
0-6 is below average.
7-13 is average.
14-19 is above average.
Scores above 20 are excellent.

So, what do you think of these 10 ways? Can you suggest any more ways to leverage facebook edge rank?

Why HDFC is No.1 Among Indian Banks for Social Media Practice

Indian banking industry is booming & is on expansion spree. Indian banks contributed 1.7 per cent to the total global brand value at US$ 14.74 billion and grew by 19 per cent in 2011 as per the annual international ranking conducted by UK-based Brand Finance Plc. According to a recent study done by Buzzom.com, Indian banks whether government or private have started using social media to stay in touch with their customers but HDFC stands out as far as leveraging social media is concerned both in terms of number of channels being used as well as engaging with their customers.

As per the graph above HDFC Bank has presence across 8 social media channels out of which the prominent presence is on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube & their official blog. Important aspect is the engagement which they do on all these channels.

Facebook

HDFC's page on facebook generates admirable feedback from users which serves as a ground for them to understand their fans as well as promote their banking products. They have a money matters section where they provide interesting recent financial news of interest to their fans. Also they keep on engaging the users with interesting puzzles/jigsaws based upon financial terms.

Twitter

HDFC's twitter approach is build upon again like their facebook approach on sharing interesting & relevant information with their followers, asking them interesting puzzles, sharing new products & deals from their stable and so on. No wonder that they have a healthy follower count of 1300+ which is growing on the daily basis.

Youtube

HDFC lacks on its Youtube marketing aspect and needs to learn from other banks like ICICI which is the second most active bank on social media in India. Although HDFC has created some great commercials for their television audience which have found their way on Youtube also and these commercials have large viewership on Youtube too but they need to leverage Youtube by posting such videos regularly on their channel & promoting it further. Here is one such video with almost half a million views so far:

LinkedIn

HDFC Bank's company page on LinkedIn has more than 13,000 followers. They haven't leveraged this platform to its full potential yet like they can display their products on their page on which they can get recommendation from the users which will serve as a live testimonial but still having a presence on LinkedIn is being helpful to them as the company stats & employees list can be browsed through to get interesting information about them.

Here's a very good graph showing the comparison of different Indian banks on social media which clearly out states the leadership of HDFC bank in this domain:

What do you think of HDFC's approach on social media?

The Google +1 Button and What It Means to Social Engagement

Recently Google launched its much awaited feature called +1 (Plus One) Button which is intended to integrate social with search. Google has been struggling a lot in the social space since a long time whether it be Orkut, Wave or Buzz. But it seems to be that Google has now arrived in the social space with this new arm in their kitty. Here's the official introductory video of +1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c&feature=player_embedded

At its core +1 is meant to counter facebook like button which has engulfed the web like a wildfire. Now the beauty of +1 is say one person +1s ('Plus Ones': my verb for pressing +1 button) a certain blog post or content on some website, other persons who are connected to him/her on gmail will see that content among the top organic google search results on front page while searching for a related keyword. One necessity for +1ing is to be logged into your gmail account & your friends will see the relevant results when there are also logged into their respective gmail accounts.

So, in a nutshell, +1 is a feature which is not intrusive like buzz and at the same time it is highly beneficial by providing relevant searches to information seekers all around the world. Google is a Big Daddy of search business & now by introducing this social feature into search it has made it more enjoyable & worthy.

What do you think of +1 button? How can it change the search business?

5 Ways To Create Effective Campaigns On Twitter

Twitter has been a social media platform of choice for broadcasting your message, having one on one interaction and for doing customer relationship management. In this post i would like to share some elements using which brands can create & launch effective campaigns on twitter.

#1. Integration across all the channels

It's important to integrate twitter activity with the rest of the campaign across all the social media channels like blogs, flickr, facebook and/or tv, radio etc. For instance Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Truck (a mobile truck restaurant) had a very poor opening initially in Los Angeles but latter on used the combination of it's blog, facebook, twitter & flickr page to launch a campaign which ultimately made it one of the best places to hang out.

#2. Reaching out to Customers

Twitter is a medium known for it's virality and this is one feature which can be tapped by the brands. This can be done by reaching out to your customers on twitter, conversing with them & helping them out. Faaso's a Pune & Mumbai based restaurant works on a very interesting 'tweet to order' model. Their customers order the food via the convenience of tweets which is then delivered to the address provided. Interestingly they are not running after number of followers but have maintained quality. Even the people who don't follow them on twitter but are aware of them order food from them!

[caption id="attachment_202" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Faaso's interaction with a customer"][/caption]

#3. Planning & Engagement is the key

If you are going to run some campaign for a month, scheduling you tweets at least a week ahead is going to help you a lot. We at Digital Vidya follow this strategy. Even if you are not running a campaign, still it's a good practice to schedule tweets. Apart from that regularly engage with your followers by answering their queries or resolving their complaints. If you do it regularly you will a surge in your followers for sure.

#4. Time it Right

Launch your campaigns when a new product or service is launched or when there is new development of interest to your customers as there is a curiosity & interest among them. For instance MTV India launched exclusive preview tweetup of “Roadies-8” for a group of twitter Influencers.

#5. Create landing pages for twitter users

It's also a great practice to create landing pages especially optimized for Twitter. This can help you manipulate the average time that people spend on your site, improve your effectiveness and increase your revenue. More details can be learned at this link: how to build effective landing pages.

What other ways can you suggest to make your campaigns more effective on Twitter?

Use of Social Media in Imparting Education at Schools & Colleges

[caption id="attachment_193" align="alignleft" width="190" caption="An actual 'backchannel' discussion on Erin Olson's English Class in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, about a poem called "To the Lady." "][/caption]

Social Media is increasingly being used by various B2C & B2B companies all around the world. Social Media is no longer a separate area but a part of Marketing Mix for most of the companies. And masses of people have adopted this medium & many feel handicap if they don't have access to Facebook or Twitter. Social Media has proved to be beneficial at almost every walk of life & now it is playing an increasingly important role in Educating the students in Schools & Colleges.

 


Some of the potential benefits of using Social Media in Schools, Colleges & Universities are:
1) Opening up in Backchannels: With Twitter already there and the availability of various other microblogging platforms like Today's Meet , Google Moderator , My Chat Box etc it is easier for teachers to set up “backchannels” in their classrooms. Backchannel simply means apart from the direct lecture from teacher to students there is an online channel running simultaneously for them to discuss & voice their opinions. Usually many students hesitate to open up during classroom lecture but it has been seen that these backchannels actually encourage students to open up & participate freely.

2) Turning Hobby into Work: Teachers who have used this system feel as students these days have smart phones & laptops ready with them and they do all sort of social networking stuff & surfing which can be distracting in a class room, it is better then to turn their hobby into work. Students don't feel distracted as they are discussing & sharing relevant content with their class mates. In fact they feel encouraged & empowered with these tools. They start their own blogs or online communities to discuss & share the knowledge with other students.

Here's an interesting video by University of Minnesota researcher Christine Greenhow on Social Media usage in Schools:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxrlrbP4UNo

Can you think of any more ways where social media can prove to be helpful in education?

Examples & Scope of Location Based Social Networks in India

Social Networking has come of age & more or less it has been adopted by a large section of people all around the world. Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn are the 3 Giants of Social Networking at the moment with all three catering to some particular needs of their users. Apart from these well known Leaders, Location based social networking is another area which is emerging very quickly in this space. Foursquare & Gowalla are the prominent sites in this space. According to a recent ComScore report "Nearly 1 in 5 smartphone owners use check-in services" and its growing. So, i would like to address the scope of these networks in India. What benefit they can provide to the consumers & brands.

1) For Merchants and other Venue owners:

Foursquare offers a free set of tools to help you attract new customers and keep your best ones coming back. Merchants can attract new customers or reward their most loyal ones by offering foursquare mobile coupons, prizes or discounts. Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) is the first brand from India to do a tie up with Foursquare to offer discounts to its regular customers. On your third check-in at CCD (applicable only for Bangalore at the moment), you will get 15% discount. And if you are the Mayor, CCD will serve you a free coffee and a 20% discount on every 3rd check-in. Another benefit for merchants is that 'Merchant Platform' allows access to your Venue Stats dashboard, allowing you to track your customer foot traffic over time.

2) For Brands that are not tied to a specific physical location:

For brands like a consumer packaged good, TV channel, university, manufacturer, or an upcoming movie release foursquare provides two main marketing tools – Pages and Custom Badges. This helps your consumers and fans to do interesting things in their neighborhoods and communities. For instance MTV uses Foursquare Page in USA to create stickiness around its brand. The pages contain the business logo, tips that the business as left at Foursquare venues & the option to follow that business on Foursquare. The page also includes links to that businesses profile on other social networks like Facebook and Twitter, thus helping in cross promotion of platforms.

Some Examples: Indian Merchants & Venue owners have already started adopting the Foursquare as can be seen from the example of CCD. ITC Green Centre (Complimentary dessert at the coffee shop on 3rd check-in!) and Cpm Cafe (Free Pizza for the Mayor!) are some other examples using Foursquare to attract customers. There are various other small brands who have started using Foursquare at various places in India.

But as far as the use of Foursquare pages is concerned there are not many takers of it in India yet. Although Jet Airways has been using this feature beautifully as can be seen from their Foursquare Page. The early adopters of this feature will clearly benefit from this exercise.

Indian Brands haven't shared any official figures yet as to how much benefit they are getting out of it but looking at the global trends and the enthusiasm among these early adopters, i am sure they are getting lot of value in terms of increased foot falls & ultimately sales. So definitely the scope is bright for location based social networks in India. All what is required is positive attitude towards this medium.

Do you know of any more examples of Indian Brands using Foursquare to leverage their Marketing Efforts?

5 Ways to Use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation

Social media has proved its worth as far as B2C companies are concerned. Even B2B companies have started using various social tools to leverage this technology which can help them to grow their business. Many B2B companies have adopted Enterprise Social Tools like Yammer, Chatter, Socialcast, Qontext etc. But these tools are for internal communication, collaboration & knowledge sharing within employees. As far as lead generation or business development is concerned Linkedin has proved to be a very good tool for B2B companies.

1. Create your Company Page: Company page is like a LinkedIn face of a company. You can provide information on the individuals behind your brand and highlight how consumers use your products. Your Company Page offers tools to bring your brand to life. There is a testimonials tab too on LinkedIn page which can help build credibility and generate business. For reference you can check the LinkedIn page of Digital Vidya (the company i work for).

2. Management Team: It's also important create a team from within your marketing department & train them in the nuances of social media tools & how to utilize them. The roles & responsibilities of the team members should be clearly defined so that there is no mis-match. For a small organization even a single person can handle the account. It's important that the team members should have well polished profiles on LinkedIn so that potential clients should have nice impression of their LinkedIn public profiles.

3. Connect and interact: Participate in the relevant offline industry events & network with people who can be your potential clients or leads. Connect with them on LinkedIn. This can be made easier by including your LinkedIn URL in your email signature, on your business cards and in the contact section of resumes, websites and blogs. Join the groups where these people are active and start & participate in discussions on those groups. This will build your reputation as a thought leader with these people in the long term.

4. Join relevant LinkedIn groups: Joining relevant active groups on LinkedIn is very helpful as many members of these groups run regular discussions on various topics & share insights with each other. This builds up your brand as a thought leader which you can use to the advantage both individually as well as for your organization. You never know when your prospects on these groups will approach you for the business. But be sensitive to the group dynamics, and don't ever try to dominate the conversation. Your materials should be a resource, not a sales push for you or your prospects. Also participate in LinkedIn Answers. They also help in creating a brand for you where you can get rewarded by other users with best answers. These are passive activities but can be very valuable in the long term.

5. Prospect Tracking: An effective keyword search can be used to reach out to the right people. A useful tip for lead generation is to check the list of people who have viewed your profile. This lets you know who is interested in your company, and they are the prospects you can target. To reach them ask your first-level contacts for introductions to their first-level contacts (your prospects) and so on. Evalueserve has done a lot of business through LinkedIn & they swear by this tactic.

What other ways you can think of to generate leads on LinkedIn? We would love to hear!

How To Be Famous on Twitter - Tips by a Twitter Celebrity

[caption id="attachment_176" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Pramit presenting his own case study"][/caption]Recently Digital Vidya (the company i work for) invited a very famous Twitter personality from India, Pramit J. Nathan in it's recent Social Media Bootcamp held at New Delhi. He has over 165,000 followers on Twitter! During his session on Twitter he explained how to gain popularity, credibility & mass following on Twitter. Here i would like to capture the essence of his enlightening talk.

1. No Rights or Wrongs: First thing he told us was that there are no rights or wrongs on Twitter. It is up to the Twitter users to define their own guidelines. Whom they follow, how they follow or for what purpose they want to use it is entirely dependent on them. Some one may want to maintain his time line clutter free & thus follow only a few hundred people & other may want to follow thousands of people & get followed back by them in return.

2. Going Mutual: Second thing which he mentioned was his approach to gain large number of followers & influence on twitter. He suggested to follow like minded people & let them follow you back & also if some one follows you then following them back. This way a mutual relationship is created. If some people don't return the favor by not following you back, you always have an option to unfollow them. Also lists can be created categorize the tweets of people whose content is dear to you.

3. Content is the key: Third thing he suggested was to create & distribute interesting content. Keep in mind that the content should be interesting to your followers which can help them & which they feel like sharing further. For this, one can write interesting blog posts & then share it and also one can retweet interesting content of other people. This also helps in building strong traction & relationship with fellow tweeple.

4. Target the influencers: He recommended that twitter users can have a much better twitter experience by friending the twitter biggies and the prolific tweeters. By retweeting them and conversing with them one gets the opportunity to reach out to their followers too and make friends with many active tweeps. He said that Twitter is his Window to the Web and his daily source for news, knowledge, humor and wisdom.

5. Don't limit: His important suggestion was not to limit yourself to a particular place or country on twitter. One can create a global personal brand on twitter. Just be open. One can find very good friends far away from your country & he even related his example when he visited Hong Kong with his wife & they met with a tweep (twitter friend) who hosted them for a great dinner and also helped them with many tips to have a great trip.

6. Hard but Easy: According to Pramit, any one can gain 1,00,000 followers on twitter. It’s just a matter of putting in the time but it’s simple to do. All you do is follow a few hundred people daily whose profile seems interesting to you & then wait for them to follow you back. After few days unfollow those who haven’t returned the favor so that you can follow more. This way one goes on increasing the number of friends (mutual followers).

Having a large twitter following does have many benefits. Pramit has been invited to many events as an expert. Also he gets the opportunity from top blogs to be their guest blogger. Apart from that there are various direct or indirect monetary and business benefits too.

What do you think can be more ways to be famous on Twitter?

Journey of Digital Entrepreneurs – From Whizlabs to Sochla

Recently my colleague Pradeep Chopra, one of the co-founders of Digital Vidya got interviewed by The Tribune on his entrepreneurial journey. This interview was published in their Jobs & Career column to inspire young & budding entrepreneurs. Here's the summary of his interview:

1. Starting Entrepreneurial Journey: Pradeep along with his IITian friend Kapil Nakra co-founded Whizlabs Software (p) Ltd with the initial investment of only 1,00,000 Rs in the year 2000. They created a product about Java certification preparation which was their first big success.

2. Challenges faced: Both of them faced stiff opposition from their middle class families as their parents being job oriented couldn't conceive of them being entrepreneurs. Also the Dot Com bust happened during the time they started their company. Not to forget the lack of sales & marketing and fund management skills in these young engineers.

3. Current Playground: After Whizlabs they ventured into Digital Vidya and now Soch.la. Digital Vidya is another success story while Soch.la is a new social networking platform based upon cricket & growing steadily.

4. Advice for budding entrepreneur: According to Pradeep, 'Passion' is the most important ingredient for being an entrepreneur. Rest all is secondary. If you want to be an entrepreneur take a plunge, don't wait to acquire all the necessary skills as the learning will take place along your entrepreneurial journey & you will pick up the skills too with the time. But if you keep on waiting & delaying then forget about being an entrepreneur.

What do you think young or budding entrepreneurs should have in them to be successful?

Ways to Use Twitter & Facebook to Build Communities & Generate Business

Twitter & Facebook have been at the centre stage as far as consumer internet is concerned. Tens of thousands of blog posts have been done all around the world citing the importance of these & various other social media tools which companies can leverage to connect to their customers directly. In this post i would like to cover some ways using which companies can build communities & generate business via social media tools mainly twitter & facebook. These were presented earlier by my colleague Pradeep Chopra at 'Gripel Social Media Marketing Excellence' and a very high profile 'Click Asia Summit'. Both these events were held in Mumbai.

Here's the gist of these presentations:

1. Twitter can be utilized by businesses first of all to listen the existing conversation going on among consumers about their brands. They should also track the conversation going on about the competitors. This will help in two ways. One is that you will come to know pros & cons of your products & services and how the consumers think of you. Second is that you will come to know about the weaknesses (which you can take advantage of) or strengths (which you can emulate or surpass) of your competitors. Apart from listening, also participate in the conversation & actively engaging with the consumers.

2. Twitter & Facebook both can be used for online reputation management. You can avoid disasters simply by being alert about online conversations about you. In fact you can convert the potential criticizers into great evangelists if you can solve their problems quickly & on time. And it helps to spread the word online very quickly. So, manually tracking the online conversations about your brand is a great necessity these days. Several tools are also available for this purpose but all of them have certain limitations.

3. The way Dell has done business worth millions of dollars via Twitter is a case study in itself. Similarly several small businesses are also doing business via twitter these days. One good indian example is Pune & Mumbai based Faaso's restaurant. They have an interesting Tweet-to-Order business model which is a great success in these two places. So, definitely, businesses can look forward to exploring twitter as an additional touch point to do the business. And it helps spread the word very fast if consumers like your products. Similarly various brands are doing business via their facebook pages.

Rest of the article with detailed examples & slides can be found out here.

5 Ways to Use Twitter to help Learn & Educate

Twitter celebrated it's 5th birthday day before yesterday on 21st March & has covered a long journey since the first ever tweet done by Jack Dorsey (one of the co-founders of twitter) and then the millions of users & billions of tweets latter it has shaped & added a new dimension to the way we communicate. Jack celebrated the 5th anniversary with his tweet read by millions around the world . Twitter has had many uses in these 5 years whether it be for professional or personal use. Here we would like to discuss Twitter's impact on education & how it can be used for better management in a class or training room.

1. Information Organizer: With Twitter, it's very easy to organize the information around a particular agenda, theme or topic. Any relevant hash tag can be defined. When different participants in a room tweet about the topic being discussed with a particular hash tag, we can read all such tweets in a single stream by clicking on that hash tag or by searching or making a different stream for that hash tag on some twitter client like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Even tools like Twubs can be used to organize the hash tags. So, the students or participants can learn a lot by following particular hash tag where people usually tweet only about the relevant stuff. For example, #edchat is a hashtag used in some countries for educators to follow the discussion around educational material & techniques.

2. Parent-Teacher Interaction: If School & teachers have twitter accounts, this can be used very effectively to have individual contact with parents of the students & can be used to provide important information on the upcoming events, parent-teacher meets, cultural functions by students, report card etc.

3. Personal learning tool: Twitter has changed it's tag line twice from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" & now to "The best way to discover what’s new in your world". It shows the way evolution of Twitter has taken place from just a casual network to more information, knowledge & news driven platform as it is today. So, it's not strange when millions around the world follow relevant Tweeple similar to their interests or lists to gain knowledge & stay updated. Even school/college students can use it for information purpose apart from the professionals.

4. Holistic participation: Twitter has emerged as a very good tool to have real time interactions in a classroom while a lecture is being delivered or in a seminar hall. All the students or participants can contribute & participate in the discussion with each other using any web enabled device. It helps, as an online medium like Twitter removes their inhibitions of feeling scared to speak up or ask questions openly in the live session. All this has been beautifully captured in this video where Twitter experiment was conducted in a UT Dallas classroom by Professor Rankin.

5. Backup tweets: As Twitter doesn't keep your tweets after a certain period of time, it's important to backup your tweets since many of our tweets contain useful information which we may want to go back & refer to. There are various ways to backup mentioned in this post of RWW. I personally prefer BackupMyTweets.

What do you feel about these ways? Can you think of more ways where Twitter can be used in education or learning?

Online Behaviour vs Offline Behavior

I wanted to do a blog post on this topic when a friend of mine got enraged from my comments on Facebook although not directed at him. He even called me on phone & threatened to not make such comments again. In his anger he even said that i am 180 degree opposite of what i am offline. Although i will not go into much detail here as it is personal but still i would really like to think upon this aspect of our personality that is it true that our online behavior is different from our offline behavior?

Let's start with our offline behavior, we engage with other people in our daily lives at various junctures, whether it be at home, office, market, Gym, Park etc. We do official work at the office, at the same time we have fun with our colleagues. We do meetings with our clients or prospects. At home, we interact with our parents, have breakfast or dinner together & discuss various things or news with each other. We have a particular style of talking to different people at different situations. With friends we can joke around & talk all the rubbish stuff which we can't do with our parents or elders. At office our talks mostly pertain to official matters, new deals, things to do etc. Sometimes we are serious, at other times we laugh. With some, we have cordial relationship while with others it's bad which we try to turn around into positive. There are so many possibilities in the life of an average human being that we may have to write a separate book on it. And every person's behavior is different from any other person. It can't be same for even 2 persons. Some may like your behavior, while others hate it. Personally, i try to behave naturally with anyone in any situation. I have a firm belief that natural behavior always lets you take the right action.

On the other hand online behavior doesn't require that much effort as required in offline since offline involves all your senses plus physical action whereas for online even a smart phone is enough. On online mediums we don't have physical contact & no real face to face interaction although we can see each other's face digitally & converse over many devices these days. But the point is lack of physical presence actually makes you more creative & at times spices up the words you use in online chats or on facebook/twitter etc. We even tend to loosen up with someone on social networking sites even if haven't interacted with that person even though he may from your school, college or office where you could have easily interacted with him. These days so many dating sites are doing a lot of business but why? Because, people feel it easier to converse with each other with spicy messages & smileys on social networking sites rather than starting the discussion online. From online they take it offline latter on these cases. Sometimes, we tend to pull each other's legs (inherent in our nature) on social networking sites especially on facebook since it has it's own culture with pokes & multiple friends conversing under the same thread where we take stand on some point. Whereas in offline world, we usually tend to avoid heated discussions as it may lead to fights or confrontations. Anyway there is a risk of misinterpretation of your online comments because they have no emotions & emphasis attached to them, you mean to say something but it is interpreted in a totally different way!

So, the point is online mediums make it lot easier for us to express ourselves in various ways. Many things which we would like to share offline but couldn't share are shared easily in status updates on facebook & twitter. So, definitely there is marked difference between our online & offline behavior & it is up to the other people how they interpret our messages & even we need to take care from our side not to hurt anyone intentionally.