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? :)

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?

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.

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.

How To: Build a community on facebook fan page

Recently i was invited by Pradeep Chopra, CEO of India's premier digital marketing training company Digital Vidya to his workshop organized by afaqs! on building effective facebook community for a brand. I was their official twitter partner, covering the event with live tweets using #DPclub hashtag. The participants were from diverse areas ranging from finance, cosmetics, bollywood tourism, media, retail, captive call centre, ad agencies etc. So, that made it a whole bunch of interesting people with different perspective on social media by each of them.

[caption id="attachment_82" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Pradeep addressing participants"][/caption]

Pradeep started with a video on various facts & figures on facebook & it's emerging role & importance for marketers. Then he proceeded it with a direct question to participants that which is the first thing they will do to create a facebook page, to which the participants came up with various answers like page name, information, profile picture etc. & finally one participant came up with a simple but most important aspect that the first thing required to create a facebook page is the objective. The company or brand should be the clear with the objectives on why they want to create a facebook page in the first place. Only then they should start building the page or community to fulfill those objectives. Objectives can be CRM, setting up a sales channel or to update users on latest news/offers regarding the company etc. For example there is a small New Delhi based company "MySunshine Candles" which has set it's facebook page for the sole objective of doing sales & interestingly all their sales happens through facebook page! Companies should never seek number of fans alone. Because just indulging in a numbers game can never lead to an effective community building. The very meaning of community is a collection of people who engage with each other. So, what a company or brand should look for is how to engage people to their brand.

And when there is a talk about engagement, companies should address these three questions regarding their target audience of high importance:
1. Who are our target audience?
2. What do they want?
3. What can we offer to them?
If the companies are able to answer these questions, they will already be on track to create a successfully engaged community on facebook.

The next thing which comes into picture is positioning your facebook presence, for which companies should appropriately name their pages & portray themselves as a formal or a Cool brand using appropriate content taking care into account their corporate image. After this is done, companies should create relevant content with an appropriate use of rich media (since it brings more attention/engagement from audience). One should not forget that your wall posts on your facebook page don't reach all of your followers! Each post has it's own percentage of impressions & feedback from the users. And this depends on the edge rank. Higher the edge rank, better will be the reach of your wall posts & thus higher the engagement.

Next, Pradeep highlighted upon the publishing, promotional & measurement aspects of companies' facebook pages. He stressed on the use of 3rd party platforms like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck etc which make it easy to plan & publish the content across different time periods. Care should be taken to not spam the users with frequent wall posts. Instead, companies should use facebook insights to see when & what kind of content is getting maximum response or least response & accordingly they can continue or discontinue such a content. Then scheduling should be done because updates cannot be done live 24 hours a day. Pradeep stressed on planning content & said that content should be planned much ahead of posting it.

As far as promotional aspect is concerned, companies can or cannot choose to use facebook advertisements depending upon their objectives. For example Condé Nast India uses no ads for it's Vogue India facebook page because Vogue India being a premier brand they believe in organic growth on facebook whereas it uses ads to promote it's GQ India facebook page because they don't consider it a premier brand like Vogue India. Pradeep also shared his own learning on the promotional aspect of facebook pages & shared a thumb rule that spend half the amount of bid suggested by facebook. He said that it works & he has been able to create some successful pages using this tactic.

The final aspect is measurement, which is very critical & also forms a part of ROI in social media. It depends on the brand what are their metrics to measure success. It can be high engagement in terms of likes or comments etc., number of fans, sales (using coupons), traffic to company's main website & so on. Facebook insights play a crucial part here too.

After delivering these concepts, Pradeep asked the participants to do an exercise on work sheets on how to build community on their respective facebook pages. There was a presentation by Shanu John (Creative Consultant at Hutchison 3 Global Services - H3GS) on their company's facebook community building strategy followed by a presentation by Kiran Gill (CMO, Lakme Lever) on their intended facebook community building exercise.

Overall the workshop was a great learning experience for all the participants. Some of the view points of the participants are as follows:
1. "The learning experiance was really great. Interaction with the other participants was too good. Would really like to attend more seminars." - Chhavi Kejriwal (Marketing, Pantaloons)
2. "I would recommend this workshop to others" - Shanu John (Hutchison 3 Global Services)

What is your facebook community building strategy? Would like to know!