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? :)