Reach & Influence – Social Media Marketing

Traditional media had always promised us millions of Reach but no one bothered to measure or did not have any tools to measure the reach with qualitative analysis. Social Media PR which is so called “New Media” in India comes with Reach and a strong influence…

People ask me why Social Media PR can be dominating in the future. The most important draw-back of traditional  marketing approach is the reach but no influence or less influence. Thought it claimed to have quantitative reach but failed to have qualitative results to the reach. We never felt it important just because we didn’t have any other option. But Social Media has opened the big doors for consumers to voice their opinions against their bad experiences with the Brand. This certainly did not change overnight in India but it took enough time to reach out to people’s realization.

Social Media Marketing - Indian Social Media

Most Importantly, Social Media Marketing comes with a strong power to influence consumers decision because of its communication model. Social Media Marketing is more towards permission based marketing approach. This does give them a right to accept what they feel and how they want it to be. It is very difficult for a brand to approach a consumers with its own rules and approach. In such case of personalization there is strong sense of influence too. Since the consumers have to power to weave their perceptions it becomes very easy so establish a strong chain of influence along with the reach. Its the enough room consumers have achieved in this medium bringing  more difficulties and straight-forward approaches for the Brands. This has completely changed the consumer’s experience with the Brand. Hence, marketers have to strongly think and brainstorm about building necessary approach in this medium. There can be silent damage to the brand if the marketers do not feel the necessity of interacting with the consumers directly, which may result in great downfalls for any Brand or service.

This certainly can also be a great help for brands to also identify the loop holes in their Marketing & Communication approach, resulting them to fix issues and problems pertaining to the Product, service and much more…

Most importantly since Social Media PR has a great Reach along with strong Influence, marketing efforts can achieve assured qualitative results and also ensure better penetration of the brand or service amongst the consumers. In such cases a clear ROI is also defined effectively.

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

Return on Time Spent

This logic is slightly philosophical, but I guess this will help a lot in understanding the characteristics of Social Media activities and its services available.

One can reap excellent benefits out of Social Media if he / she does enough research on Social Media, its characteristics, the way it works, they way it reacts to us. Many of us have a myth about Social Media is just to know about tools which will help us to communicate our key messages. But, the actual feel of how social media would react to our communications will totally depend on how much time do we devote online by getting engaged in Social Media activities such as :

• Commenting on interesting topics
• Participating in the Discussions
• Participating in the Brainstorming activities on Brainstorming sites
• Blogging and commenting on Blogs, its not about just saying “good post”,  “I just dropped on  this site and the content is good”, “good one”. All these are not comments or value additions. It is just a formality to increase their own visibility by establishing more number of backlinks. The real commenting is when you add some value additions to the existing article, which will give you more insights to the post or an article on a Blog. This will be appreciated even by the Author of the Blog and certainly develop good relationships with the Author
• Tweeting – Tweeting is an important activity. It goes in a teaser perspective, due to its 140 character limitation. Moreover, tweeting is a very influential activity to spread the message across, it acts well to distribute the information across
• Interacting with the unknown people who equally share like minded thoughts or totally different thoughts, managing conversations with the online people
• Trying to make assumptions of their likes and dislikes
• Getting anxious to their responses
• Drafting responses to the unexpected and weird comments

All this won’t be possible if an individual is not involved in these activities actively. The consequences of not being active and yet implementing the strategies would always end up in negative responses, negative reputation and unexpected reviews or feedback from the users.

Yes.. It is a time consuming activity and lot of research is needed before one tries to indulge in these activities.  Moreover, to implement a smooth and flawless Social Media activity, one has to listen to what people are saying and also understand what do they expect. One has to be even Social in nature, this will help a lot in weaving new thoughts of triggering conversations or conversational topics.

Good openings for people who talk a lot, think a lot, and likes to keep on conversing on Philosophical thoughts. , But there can be saturation if you over do it also

India is still very aggressive in supporting Causes and CSR activities through Social Media. As it still works out with a common objective i.e “Support”, “Raise Voice Against”, “Save” and many more.

There has been a major confusion amongst people about Tools and Communication strategy in India. Marketers are skeptical about engaging users with indirect communications as they are very much used to direct communications. This trend might take some time to entirely get changed into engaging users with their choice of content.

PR Professionals, Advertising Professionals will have to spend lot of time through indulging into social media activities as being part of it and act like the end users to understand the clear kn0w-how of Social Media and other forms of Digital Communications.

Hence, its time to take an immediate call and act like an end user and achieve excellent returns on the time spent. I dont have evidences to it, but it would be clearly evident if an individual is totally involved in Social Communities.

Cost of Inactivity

I would like to thank to one of my online friend – ISABELLE who has been actively discussing with me on this matter, The Best part of our discussion was coming up with a  new perspective to look at “Cost of Inactivity” rather than analyzing it through ROI, Cost per click etc etc.

Inactivity has been an important concern in the Social Media World especially in the Indian Markets. Social Media has been very successful in other countries. India has still yet to taste the response of Social Media. Yes there are many companies who have started using Social Media as one the mediums to engage people. But they are not completely in it. The current perception of the Indian market is still restricted to contests, Campaigns to engage users and not discussions, brainstorming and other Crowd sourcing activities. Indian brands are still skeptical to act transparent to the actual people and still looking at different ways to control these mediums in either restricting themselves on tools or content.

But Social Media is more than just sharing a company’s information, their operations, their expansion plans, service etc. Social Media is also, giving an opportunity to the people to participate in one’s brand conversations, such as brand enhancements and many more. It need not have to be specific to the brand but a relative activity of the brand. Ultimately what people look for is an opportunity to converse with people on different possible discussions, express their views, frustrations, ideas etc. where they would like make some value additions. The Best example of is the Idea Campaign, it does have an emotional connect as well as involve people in the brand’s Initiatives.

There is one more reason why Brands in India are not very keen in involving real people in their activities, as the fear of conversations going against them. But, its worth taking a risk.

It needs a long term strategy to develop good relationships with the real people. An ideal social media strategy should span across between 3 to 6 months. Social Media strategies are little time consuming, but in this case we are building a communication support to backup our promotional activities. It just like somebody approaching you with a product which has no history and future. Everyone needs some supporting, not just appearing it on Hoardings, Electronic media, but also adding some personalized touch to it.

Brands still look at one big Idea, than looking at simple strategies to support it. And this kind of practice is dangerous for a brand image. Moreover, just being listed on all popular social media services, will not be considered as being active on it. One has to talk to people, ask their reviews, involve them in the brand’s survey processes and also involve them in possible brainstorming processes. This will certainly place any brand to a customer’s expectation and also building brand loyalty. People wants their concern to be considered. So far we have been hiding and running away from their concerns, and naturally that leads a Brand Disaster in the coming future. Moreover, being active is so important as there is immense competition around the brands itself. Lets understand one thing, being inactive is far more expensive than being active. Here are some important aspects to look at it:

1. Misunderstanding towards a Brand
2. Loosing valuable customers without knowing
3. Negative Influence
4. Misinterpretation of the customers  expectation and hence ending up in a loose out
5. Advantage for the competitors
6. Negative conversations going out of control damaging the Brand Reputation
7. Very difficult to convince and provide possible justification on a claim or an incident
8. Loosing out good opportunities to connect with consumers directly and also understanding their expectations
9. Spending lot of money on the research companies, with assumptive survey reports
10. Unwanted Redirection of Valuable Conversations
    

Looking at so many possible disadvantages, Is Being Inactive Worth a try ?

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.

Emerging Digital Media – An interview with Mr Rohan Moorthy- Hanmer MS&L, India

Hi, One of my friend Mr Rohan Moorthy who is a PR Professional working with HANMER MS&L, handling clients such as Oberoi Mall, Jotun Paints Shares his viewpoints on how digital media can be useful for his clients and what does he plan to suggest his client about it. He has shared his detail view points on how Digital Media can prove effective to the existing marketing communications.

I am sharing a podcast on a detailed conversation with him on this topic.

Digital Marketing – You can’t afford to ignore

This is the only thought I always carry whenever I meet a new client for pitch presentations on Digital Marketing. I always choose to meet the actual decision makers because they are the one who needs to understand how digital marketing can help enhance their brand loyalty and values.  Because Digtial  Marketing needs complete transparency in the information or deals provided to them. Hence the actual decision makers has to be present while understanding how digital Media works and reacts. Even though many times I end up meeting other part of the organizations. I don’t blame them, because everyone who is in charge of marketing always follows the proven methods of marketing. But there has to be a clear thought process and one needs to have enough exposure towards all kinds of marketing.

All the smart marketing professionals do understand the importance of digital Marketing and its reach. One thing everyone should be open is for new ideas and news mediums to explore, which drives marketing communications for their respective companies.

I have met many clients in India where they are not even open for discussions on Digital Marketing, because they are scared of being written wrongly. I agree, since web is a open platform and anybody can write anything about anyone. But what have we done to overcome it? If something is written against you or any wrong information is published.

Let me give an example:

In the traditional media there is a control on what’s written on a brand, service or a personality. Despite of all these things there have been so many articles which are been wrongly published or wrongly quoted. Brands do take care of it through their PR agencies… right…, but what is the use of taking care after the first damage is done. If something wrong has to happen or if somebody wants to write wrongly about anything, they would still write. Same is on WEB. Lot of clients say that we don’t want to carry out any marketing programs online, as sometimes it back fires them. But how? I don’t see a reason to it on why one should not use web as a medium to communicate their marketing or awareness initiatives. Why does one think like that? In fact there is a great influence on the brands through web. It may be a Babycare product or it might be techno gadget. Everybody relies on web for detailed information right from the cost to reviews. And it really matters to ones buying decision.

Let me come back to the topic where we were discussing about how one can write negatively about a brand, service or a personality – on the web. For any product & service, there is criticism & applauds. It all depends on how one carries it forward. If there is criticism, one has to come forward & give enough justification and show transparency towards their practices. I am sure it will not take much of time to convert criticism into applauds. But one needs to be proactive to go ahead and work accordingly towards it. After all why do we have programs such as online monitoring, Online Reputation Management etc, presence in Social Media. All these programs do help an organization or a brand to actually overcome all these hurdles. Well Digital Marketing follows a different set of rules on marketing & PR. One needs to really think out of their old ways of marketing and handling customers. I even mentioned in one of my articles that it is no more a sellers market, hence it’s a buyers market. And buyers do expect direct information, direct reach and transparency in ones communication.

Many marketing professionals do ignore this medium, but what are we doing about those suspicious comments made on the brands in the digital medium. If we don’t bother about it, it might bother us in future. In every marketing practice there is something called anticipation which leads the future of any organization.

To share with:

I had come across a brand called Nestle. Surprising there are so many social Groups on “Boycott Nestle”. Which has more 3,000 users each in the group? I am sure Nestle is not doing anything to manage their online presence. With the extension of Internet Bandwidth and more Internet service providers in the market. Very soon we will find every single person in this country having a Personal computer and an internet connection. I am sure Brands, service industries etc will have a tough time to convince users. So, its time that we build our presence and be ready for all kinds of possible hurdles. Lot of marketing professionals do think of competition, but how many competitive promotions are really genuine enough to be worth called as competitive. People do have enough spending affordability. The only thing they look for is genuine deals. Even if it little out of their budgets but they do see how loyal the marketer are. As that affects their relationship with the marketers in the long run. I hate to see Teaser marketing promotions which follow “Conditions Apply”. In the current scenario this is the most attractive marketing practice but yet it is proven to be very wrong marketing practice. Lot of marketing professional might not agree. But where is the trust in the brand, which every organization looks for. Are we are not targeting long term relationships with our customers? Are we going to sell only one product to the customer in all our future marketing practices? Certainly not…

All I have to say about Digital Marketing is an organization needs to be very transparent when you are directly reaching your consumers and hence rather face them than avoiding them. Because they are ones who can bring success to any business in the world. And digital marketing multiplies your business to X10 times to any other main stream media activities. But they are equally important at times.

Build & Manage Online Reputation

I have come across many people perceiving Online Reputation Management (ORM) as a program to only avoid Negative articles. I don’t blame anybody for this, because the concept of Online Reputation Management started with managing negative articles appearing in the search engines. Though it has been an important program to handle negatively published articles online. This post is not just to educate anybody on what is ORM. But this article will help in looking at broadly.

Let me share my experience with a similar case:

The other day my boss just asked me to do some online analysis to find out whether any negative articles are been published on one of our client’s name. I went through the Search engines, Blog directories, Social Communities to figure out if there is anything negative written or negatively portrayed. Surprisingly I did not find anything on these platforms.

I took almost 2 days to do a complete analysis on a particular brand. Well, let me share.. I had been to many Blog directories Indian & International as the possibilities of something written on a brand, service or an individual is more. So I took this route first. But I could not find anything. I had submitted the report to my boss and he got back to me in a day and the first thing he asked me was “hey there is nothing negative about this client what are we doing then for them. Is this some kind of joke” believe me he literally used these words. I took exactly 5 seconds to collate everything and asked him to give me a second to speak up. So he said yes….. The first thing I told him was that Online Reputation Management is not a program to be carried only when there is a problem. But this a program to be carried out even if there is no problem and nothing negatively published. Every one must have heard this saying “Prevention is better than cure” Same way managing a brand reputation or building a brand reputation is equally important as handling negative published articles. Listening to this my boss just tried smiling on it and gave a satisfied nod. Then he said “OH I never thought of this”.

There have been many circumstances when I come across people who stick to the written concepts or published articles online, books etc or influenced. But if one thinks this way… They may start feeling… “Why Not”

Why do we wait till the damage is done to a brand, why can’t we develop such measures before we anticipate of going something wrong. The search engine really supports well in these matters. If we are building a reputation or managing a reputation for any brand, Service, Product or an individual, we regularly post clear and transparent articles, profiles, and all insights of it. We do it regularly,  so that this process always keeps our real reputation up in the search engines, similarly keeping a track of it would also help us monitoring and also avoid unnecessary interference created by negative or falsely written information. Thus we succeed in avoiding a black mark on the respective brand, products, services etc.