Social Media Optimization – The Tedious Part

Social media tools for socialites that is becoming increasingly popular is the internet. Reasons could be many, but main one is the content generated by the users which is directly from the public. Social networking sites and very popular with the users, and plenty of them can be found online. They are free to use and are advanced in technology. The concept of social media optimization utilizes such forms of media for increasing your website popularity and value. As a form of online marketing strategy, it is also a part of functions carried out by the search engine optimizers. In social media optimization whet website pictures itself as an expert, not as a business. Optimization of your content by keyword is crucial here. Make sure you update your content on regular basis. Do not forget to use apt keywords and phrases, but stay within limits and do not over stuff your content. When starting SMO, you should submit your main site to as many social networking sites as possible. Social Media Optimization requires lots of effort and hard work, similar to Search Engine Optimization. One will not be able to craft web space and presence without being patient and hard working. It is the unlimited web presence offered to the website optimizers, that is the main advantage of social networking sites. To increase business popularity, Social Media optimizers can use its name and reputation. Some use a fictional name for this purpose, which is also OK. We can therefore craft a profile of our virtual and non-existing person, but it should be avoided if possible. No matter what name you use, it is crucial that your profile shows strong background and experience in the required field of business. The most common cause of the marketing tools and techniques failure is inadequate exposure to the business that is being promoted which later leads to brand anonymity. It is very important these days that marketing is done in proper and continuous manner. Promoting is very difficult with a new business, but if you do it in a planned manner you can have really good results. Online business, in order to be successful, needs you to put a lot of work and effort. Many optimizers have agreed that social media optimization is a good option for effective website optimization.

Social Media Optimization also involves a clear strategy of the specific tool adoption. Sometimes, the selection of tools are very important more than the Social Media approach. The selections of tools directs us towards a clear goal of reaching our target audience and this has to be planned to what is the overall reach one is looking at. In some cases this is tedious in nature ensuring every tool is connected to each other to ensure a seamless content distribution. But there are some tools such as Friendfeed, Facebook, Tubemogul which helps content dissemination easier.

There has been a significant evolution with the current tools which have come up with more integration options. Thus, hoping to similar evolutions in future which will make things more organized and smoother for any Social Media Programs

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

Building Social Conversations

Conversations are built on the quality of the content used, it could be in the form of Pictures, Videos, text, link, captions or any form of the content. I am not just saying content, but it is all about quality content. “Quality Content!!” this sounds too tricky. Sometimes I would feel what quality content would be. Is it professionally shot pictures, videos, written text… Hey…. No not at all… What I mean about quality content is something which triggers you to express your views, something which tickles you, something which instigates you to raise your voice, opinions. In other words, something which involves you in a conversation, viewing of videos, viewing of photographs and much more. The content associated with every conversation should connect users with their expressions and views. Be it a picture or a video, we always have something to say about it, but sometimes it subsides within ourselves or sometimes the content is so strong that we cannot handle our expressions and the result would in the form of comments, liking etc. Though it might be just a picture or a video there should be something associated with it, as every picture or a video has something to say always. Many of us still feel that if just sharing content would be enough to trigger conversations, YES in simple words. Imagine in our school days, everyone of us would be very excited to share our new fancy looking water bottles, New school Bags, New Book covers, New pencil boxes with our friends. Sometimes you also drive attention of people who are not your friends, just because you have something unique with you to talk about or share about.

It’s the same thing, you do it when you share something unique and creative with the users. These are key elements to drive people’s attention and hence building conversations around the content. Now this content could be company facts, their developments, their expansions in the industry, their achievements, let people know about what we are doing, in this case we are giving them an opportunity to speak to us or about us.

There are some other ways to look at triggering conversations such as using some teaser messages such as “Government goofing up with people’s tax money”, the picture or video associated with it could be very positive such as the video might show the entire tax money getting utilized for the betterment of the country and also showcases important initiatives taken in the progress of the country. These kind of messages will certainly add lot of value and will also gain lot of conversations to its surprise value too. So, the idea behind triggering conversations are not building BIG ideas, but small idea pieces which builds regular conversations around a brand, service or an individual

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 ?

Dont Cry in Crisis | Social Media Marketing | Online Crisis PR

We have always been discussing how can we promote a brand or an identity. But we never thought of how to manage a current one. I am referring to a fact which I just came across – Domino’s Pizza.  I just saw a video of Domino’s Pizza on Youtube. Firstly, I would say, this was a deliberate attempt to spoil the image of the company.  Everyone is just talking about the video, but no one talked about “WHY”, it could be many social reasons. This could have been because of a personal misunderstanding of that particular outlet. I would say no one would do it deliberately. Well I am not in favor of these offenders, but I am just trying to look at different perspective. We might have problems with our manager, supervisors etc, this might also lead negative effects to a particular brand. We always discussed that Social Media is useful for HR, but now its time to take it seriously. Handling our own people and keeping them happy is the most important thing one should look at it. Moreover, earlier people use to talk bad about their managers, companies etc. But now they also have a platform to express their feelings and also look at damaging a Brand’s image.

We always look at satisfying the external audience, but sometimes it becomes very important to also attend our internal Audience. The Domino’s Pizza act  clearly brings out the inefficiency of the employer to satisfy the needs of the employees.

There can be some more reasons :

• Just for Fun without understanding the repercussions of their Act
• Dealt with rude Customers

This clearly states that every employee should also be trained or explained about what kind of possible acts they should not perform during work hours which might bring the brand into negative image.

What does a Brand do ?  when they come across such a nuisance… Depends on what industry you are. A Brand should be more careful if their industry deals with the customers directly, such as Entertainment Industry, Food Industry, FMCG Industry and many more similar to it. When there is a direct relation with the customers, the Brand should be more cautious about customer service, Customer problems & complaints. A Brand should be proactive enough to deal with these problems. Certainly it will always help to troubleshoot the unexpected damages.

Social Media does help the employers to spot out many new unexpected problems, and accordingly a Brand or an Employer should be proactive enough to handle it immediately.

But I appreciate the Domino’z Pizza CEO who proactively shot a video for the consumers and apologized it. Certainly the damage has already happened to the Brand, but its a learning for everyone. But we should really appreciate the CEO of Domino’s Pizza for his wise act and showing concern. I think every brand should take these kind of acts very seriously and engage themselves in monitoring conversations online and take necessary precautions for unexpected problems.

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.

Search Social Media

Analyzing Search Engine Results keeping  target reach is difficult. There are some many aspects to look at it.

Yesterday my friend Sudhindra was speaking to me about certain targeted and non-targeted areas in the online space. The query which he came up was that how many people do access Article Marketing database and how many access News Release Directories.

Similarly many people might have similar thoughts, but i guess the logic is pretty clear.. Any search gives you Blended search results. When a user searches for anything, he never looks into whether the search is been found on Article directory or a News release directory. He just keys in the query and looks for relevant information to the search query. Hence it does really mean that people only look at Article directories or the news Release directories. In fact, its our lookout to identify what the user is looking for and based upon also identify the most popular platforms to get hooked up. Based on this analysis we should decide what source to be chosen.

I would say Search Engine follows  a centralized information system. Hence it helps any user to find any kind of results from any part of the world. Of course, there are some advance features for a user to enhance the search experience. The point here is we have so many platforms which has opened opportunities for brands and industries to publish and post their content anywhere in the online space. But one should still follow the basics of SEARCH. As the entire exchange of information in the online space is possible only through search engines and their procedures.

In another incident I met a gentleman from a very reputed agency, Infact i was presenting few ideas of distributing content across the internet space, So I mentioned about a news sharing platform DIGG. Immediately I was asked about the target audience available in DIGG from India. I stated very clearly, that our only approach is get into search results because that is how the entire communication begins. Why do we worry about what platforms we are using to publish our information than thinking of positioning ourselves in the search engines. We should certainly look at Authority sites..

So as I said in my earlier posts, that, its the only basics which has evolved in different Facets of Communication.

No one can ignore or outrank the basics of Search Engine methods. Hence Social Media has evolved due to Search Engines & Authority Sites.

ROI | Return on Investment | India Social Media | Overview on Social Media Marketing

Does it really needed in Social Media marketing ? Some say yes and some say no.. and some say don’t know….. I have been to a summit in India where people were discussing only about ROI, before even considering social media as one of additional tool for marketing the brands.

Why do we always think about the benefits first before even planting trees. In my older posts, I had mentioned about the ROI in the internet advertising model, where CPC, CTR are all involved. Those days have gone. Many dot companies have earned a lot and they are still earning. But the entire business model is changing.  It is driving towards more realistic evidences than calculating the number of clicks. I don’t even know who clicked my Ad, whether the user is worth my product or not.

We all know the great internet jobs, “Sit at home and just click the ADs” and the money will be transferred to your respective accounts. I am sure in the near future all these activities will phase out and it will take a very realistic turn in the internet industry, where the marketers will pay for the activities which are really worth.

Many people are still misguiding the marketers, Brand managers by getting ROI (Return on Investment ) into picture for Social Media. Why do we still get into number of clicks, visitor statistics etc..  It is so evident that we are getting real conversations, real comments, and user written reviews on the products. Is that not enough!!!… Let us take the screenshots of the real conversations happening on social platforms and consider it as the real evidences towards our product. Is this logic so difficult to understand by any Internet Marketing  Professional ? I am sure it is a great attempt to misguide the Brands and their associated people.

But things are pretty clear nowadays. As Social Media is evolving, things are drastically changing in India Markets, where more and more people getting inclined towards Social Media Marketing.

As they feel that there is no better platform available. But good things always come with great responsibilities.  We need to be more serious and sincere in our conversations. Be more transparent, be more open minded in sharing information. Try pushing your brand to people directly and then rest assured, if dealt sincerely. Rest people will push your brand across the world. This is the mantra of Social Media.

Its like “Jo Dar Gaya, Samjho Mar Gaya”. So dont fear, just reply….and talk to people…