Social Feedback Cycle

So far we have been seeing how to build conversations, engage people with our brands to build awareness around the brand, product & service.  Most important work starts after the purchase considerations or after a consumer starts using the product, service; this is an area where major damages cause to any brand, service, product, identity etc. Most of the reviews we see is the result of unhealthy experiences of the services, product. Most of the marketers fail to analyze this aspect and hence try to build awareness without knowing what is been written and what is been talked about a brand. The most important thing for any marketer before getting into Social Media Marketi­­­­­ng, is to build internal process to handle queries and marketing promises effectively after the purchase cycle as it reflect in the discussions of the online users. Most important thing is the efforts made behind Social Media Marketing are endless, hence to manage these activities effectively in the long run; one has to be very clear in understanding the willingness of being transparent in their communications.

Coming back to the feedback cycle, most of them in India have also realized the importance of the Social Feedback cycle and they are working backwards the set few things right in order to gain consumer’s trust. And some are still getting carried away with review portals where their product reviews can be posted with an additional cost.

This is still fine in few cases as manier times, it is really difficult to rate a particular product as it might have too many features for a consumer to rate it, this also involves a strong market survey to understand what a best deal would be for a consumer, base on it a balanced review can be generated. The best example I would give in India is mouthshut.com. This is the only portal in India which had been purely into user generated content and currently a leading portal for UGC across India and also influences lot of people in their purchase decisions. I would rate this portal to completely dependant on Social Feedback Cycle.

But yes there are other portals too which handles fake reviews, so beware of it.

I would identify the most important area in Social Media Marketing is the Social Feedback cycle, the feedback cycle shows a clear path to your future Social Media Marketing efforts. Hence I would also say that Social Media Marketing is not for everyone and everybody, but most of them

Bad Practices Using Social Media | Social Media Marketing

Gifts & Prizes are no more special to anyone.  In India, Marketers have started misusing Social Media for their own benefits. I keep coming across many new blogger contests, where they have started giving prizes for tweeting and writing about their brand in their blogs. Well I would like to refer the recent one which I just came across organized by Indiblogger.in and Peppysophia.com. The way they have communicated about the blogger contest is truly commercial and intentional. Hmmmmm…. Why are marketers trying to spoil and control this medium.

Why can’t marketers leave it to a blogger to write whatever he or she feels about. Why are marketers making it more obligatory to write positive about them.

Prizes, Money and expensive gifts do spoil people’s mind and their skills. But one has to understand and make their own decision, whether to support these acts or discourage these acts. Believe me, being in a controlled messaging world, I feel social media is a place where one can express his or her views openly without any hassles.

I recently came across few blogger communities who are equally supporting these acts. Please guys.. why can’t we keep these communities clean and not handover ourselves to these selfish motives.

Certainly, there are other marketers who understand the value of Blogs and other Social Media Platforms, who see that they don’t loose out the essence of this platform. I would term Social Media as People’s Media.

So let people decide what is wrong and what is right and not try to influence them with Gifts & Prizes. Of course, there can be gratifications, but there should not be any motive behind it.

Needless to say, this shows that how valuable our comments and our suggestions are.  They do get considered, which certainly acts as Word of Mouth (WOM) publicity. There can be few aspects to look at it :

1. Wants to share information about their brand
   
2. Wants to distribute information across multiple channels
   
3. Wants to conduct a survey through Bloggers
   
4. Wants people to review their product
   
5. Wants to build direct relationship with the consumers
   
6. Wants to observe or keep a close eye on how a product is performing
   
7. Wants to be more transparent about their functionality and their operations
   
8. Considering the fact that online users are far more powerful than the people behind using traditional news items such as Publications and electronic media, so caring about online users is justified

Only these are possibilities due to why one wants to invite Bloggers or run a social Media campaign or there can be some detailed reasons from the above.

All others could end up tampering an individual’s opinion and views.  So friends, lets not get influenced with these worthless Gifts and Prizes which influences us to tweak our thoughts and opinions.

Website or a Blog

This had always been a debate through out my experience in Online Marketing & Social Media Marketing. Lot of people are still amused in differentiating a Blog and a Website.

I come across  many people who always keep asking me what is a Blog, certainly they know about a website. I keep telling them, it’s just another website which is available on a shareable domain name such as yourname.wordpress.com, myname.blogspot.com.

Well to justify it. There is absolutely no difference in a website and a Blog. Both are web pages built for certain needs. The only difference is that a website can be customized in any form and then can be uploaded. But whereas, a Blog is a predefined template and can use only the defined features in it.

For new entrepreneurs, Authors, celebrities a Blog is the most ideal tool for online communication. Many clients who are authors, Celebrities do ask me for a website. But I always suggest them for a Blog. It gives all features such as uploading content, Images, Video and many more. Blogs can also be hosted on a defined domain, for further customization to make it look like exactly a website. In fact it is an easy way of launching your online Identity within minutes. Online Search Engine Optimization, formatting of the content, renaming of the images, assigning right kind of keywords, linking, interlinking etc, almost everything is possible. You can even add multiple pages to your Blog to make it look like a website. So what else one does want?

In such a competitive online world, everyone feels that an online identity is must, hence small entrepreneurs can really use this concept to spread their business across the digital space in minutes. Because the new upcoming companies will surely not have the kind of content and topics as seen in the website. Many people are still not convinced with the html page driven website or a Blog, they still feel that a flash based website is more interactive and attractive. But this is not the case any more, nowadays people look for unique and informational content. They no more feel the impact. If one observes, most of the popular sites available online are all HTML, CSS driven sites. Certainly it can attract many search engines effectively, hence also gaining a popular ranking in it. Well creating a Blog is certainly very cost effective and can be done in minutes, without worrying about time, creativity, content. This is has been the most popular concept available online.

I always think that we see it the way we perceive it. But sometimes we should see the logical aspect of it. In India, many people do think that a Blog and a website are two different things. But, it is absolutely not. I hope that all our young and upcoming entrepreneurs do realize this aspect and would identify their ready made online presence available for free. Imagine if this happens, we would achieve a breakthrough in internet communication in India, which is still lacking at times. It is certainly a very cost effective and a convenient tool to use.

But when do we start realizing?

Influential Jounalists of the World Wide Web

Everybody must be surprised who are these New Journalists of World Wide Web (WWW). Well lot of people has assumptions and predictions. But the fact lies is very soon bloggers will be known as the most powerful and sensible journalists online. So fasten your seat belt.

You can be a Blogger, provided if you are focused on what you are writing. Let me give a close comparison with our traditional journalists. Our traditional journalists are focused and they write on their chosen topic. For eg: they write on Entertainment, Aviation, Pharmaceuticals, Lifestyle, Celebrities, Engineering, Finance, Sports, retail, infrastructure etc. In conventional PR, we actually rely on these journalists for our client’s communication. We develop stories in the form of press releases and we get in touch with the respective journalists who write on the relevant industry. The journalists are very selective about their stories and write it based on the news provided to them.

The new journalists of WWW (World Wide Web) seem to be very close to them. A Blogger is focused about what he is writing and the kind of topic he chooses. They own a Blog which is itself a news aggregator and based on the individual Blog’s readership the news travels online. The only difference is 10 to 15 conventional journalists or editors work for one single News publication i.e Times of India, DNA, Indian Express. Yes, But, there are few journalists who do freelancing and they seem to be distributing their stories on multiple publications. A Blogger seems to have ownership of his/her News Publication i.e a Blog and has more than 10 million readerships sometimes. But it all depends on what is he/she is Blogging on. Well, again Blogging is not for everybody. I don’t say that you cannot become a blogger, but it all depends on what is your objective towards Blogging. There are many cases when I come across who say that I am a Blogger and they don’t have focus on what they write and how they write. Blogging also depends on how frequently you Blog and what kind of quality information does your Blog have. Blogging does not end in some time. Many new blogger s who have just thought of starting their Blog and, they sometimes feel that they will publish 50 to 60 articles and would gain good readership… that’s it… But the difficult part of being a genuine Blogger is to regularly post articles till your blog is up. There have been cases, where people have been Blogging for more than 6 years and they are still actively going on. Anyone who has a Blog does not naturally become a Blogger. There should be some focus and some objective towards Blogging. Earlier, Bloggers use to write just because they like writing just as we write our personal diaries. But it got evolved in the earlier years. Now, Blogging seems to an important part of information distribution channel. But this is many people’s assumption. Even though there has been no direct conclusion on it. We still seem to be very fond of bloggers and their writing. Because many a times its their self opinion which matters a lot to drive the influential marketing online. Lot of PR agencies or the Corporate have started relying on their opinions. Because the best part of a Blogger is he/she never writes or adds information as it is. Rather they take their own time to understand, perceive and then write on it in their own version & style. Now that sounds very interesting and very much realistic. But it works both the ways, most of the times positive and at times negative also as it is their personal opinion. But genuine bloggers do understand it well and come out with very logical and sensible opinions which drive lacs and lacs of traffic towards their Blog on daily basis and simultaneously to other destinations where the actual information belongs to

Why I chose to write about Bloggers being the most powerful journalists on WWW is because it very much connects to my old post – THE REAL TIME NEWS. As this particular post adds lot of value to it. After reading this post people might think that most of the information written in this post is towards Blogging. Absolutely NOT.. Sometimes you have to know the characteristics to understand a character.