Is Social Media = Facebook + Twitter?

More often than not you would end up asking yourself this, especially is social media is what you do. I ask this almost daily. Whenever I meet some and tell them what I do, what I hear back is, “Oh! Wow! Facebook and Twitter!”

It used to irritate me earlier; now, I understand that I need to take it in stride for the ignorant few. You can’t help it! While dabbling with the thought, it struck me that each one of us defines a term, a profession, or an action, a process in a way that makes it easy to identify with. With the monumental growth of Facebook and Indian whose who on Twitter, it is very obvious that social media in common man’s language becomes Facebook + Twitter.

Talk about videos – YouTube is on your minds. Want to wish someone birthday on phone, more often than not you would also end up facebooking your friend with the same wish as per the new social protocol that has taken over our lives. An App is nothing but the good old web application that we have been clicking through for some time now, but an App is something that directly relates to our mobiles or to Facebook. Meanwhile while we might be stuck to some of these definitions, we are quick to evolve too! Now instead of Flickr(ing) it you Pin(nterst) it!

Also, notice how we also add to the English dictionary certain other brands as language words. When hurt we do not ask for a bandage but a ‘band-aid’. When thirsty we reach out for a Bisleri and not a bottle of water from the roadside vendor. The latest – iPad! What does one ask for if he wants to buy a tablet – iPad!

Considering these and many more such examples, I derive peace that its okay if people think and perceive me doing Facebook + Twitter for a living. Yes, when I do meet a few interested few, we dvelve on it more and it all becomes enlightening for the other!

Cheers to us and how we try to make things easy and the easy slowly evolves with our lifestyles and becomes an integral part of it!

What are your thoughts on this? Sure, would love to hear from you guys. Want to know more from me, follow my blog or follow me on Twitter @ajaxjoshi

Why does every brand page needs a Facebook App?

What is a Facebook App?

A Facebook app is nothing but a micro site, Period! How a techie might put it – It is something that can do almost anything we want to. Coming into Facebook from a hosted source, you could have the database to be what you had like it to be – which unlike through the App is impossible to extract information from Facebook

Not all people put their contact number and address in online forms – with a Facebook App using Facebook connect you get your information and properties when you can reach your fans.

Keeping Facebook’s promotion guidelines in view, an App is what a brand needs to fuel the much needed engagement and impetus for the brand though sweepstakes, contests, loyalty programs…

… and more…

1. They have an inherent Marketing Potential

2. They act as engagement drivers

3. Enable outbound linking (a big one to have an app!)

Putting 2 and 2 together, it is no doubt an imperative, a must have for every brand Facebook page. If you don’t have one, get one today or miss the opportunity to access the 800MM worldwide!

Send me your app links… follow me @ajaxjoshi

HOW TO Measure Success – Social Media KPIs

This one is a follow-up post to my earlier post ‘HOW TO Measure Engagement – Social Media KPIs‘. In this post, i would like to talk about ROI of social media. Or, would it be better if I say we use the term Return on Experience (ROE) instead of ROI?

I will choose to talk about ROE, since ROI discussions are something most traditional marketers enjoy hiding behind! No offense meant but the mere idea of talking about ROI in traditional on assumption while ROI in social to be obvious – eyebrows will rise! Though ROI in traditional is something now brands have agreed to go by through the years, social has a long way to go if that were to be the case.

That’s about it on that in this post. Another post opening up that debate soon.

So, as a general rule, we could use the following 3 broad KPIs to measure success:

1. Exposure - How many people will be exposed to our brand/activities?
2. Engagement - How many people will engage with our brand/activities?
3. Evangelism - How many people will create content and evangelize our brand/activities?

Broadly these 3 will define your success. A set of KPIs for each of these will further breakdown numbers coming from all the social channels and networks that our campaign will leverage. Each one adding up to another, some overlap like a comment on a post amounts to engagement as well as evangelism though it should fall under engagement.

What do you think about this. Looking forward to your feedback/queries in comments.

Follow me @ajaxjoshi 

SOCIAL > Media – [SERIES] Post 1

I have always believed that SOCIAL > Media and thats one of the major reasons why I am in this profession that I am – SOCIAL!

We have numerous social media marketers, trainers, specialists…and yes the evangelists. Numerous evangelists? What do you think? numerous is a small count, ain’t it?Who is an evangelist? I am an evangelist, you are an evangelist, everyone is an evangelist. We are all evangelist in our own right and we are zealous advocates of a cause, idea, movement, initiative, or even a brand.

Not beating too much around the bush let me come to why I say SOCIAL > Media – but, before that a small introduction to Cricket in India for my fellow members/colleagues on social space who live in a non-cricket playing country. Cricket in India is a religion. We Indians are crazy about cricket. Today, one of India’s most prolific batsmen, Virender Sehwag, who we also call Viru scored a world record breaking 219 runs in a 1-day international match against the West Indies. Now, I am sure you are confused -”Why is this blogger talking about cricket?” Ah, i will let you in on the answer to this question. Repeating again, SOCIAL > Media, today the whole of Twitter and Facebook was abuzz with Sehwag and Viru and the 200 + runs that he scored. So? Why was the social space abuzz? A few had the previlege to wwatch the match live, rest were glued to their TV sets or watching the stream online. But all of us were sharing our joy with each other of scintillating batting with our friends, family et al online.

We are all social and like to celebrate and spend happy moments with a larger group of people. When it comes to something like Cricket, we are bound together so tightly that it doesn’t matter if I am in a crowd and I hardly know anyone. i will not think even once before I chat up with anyone within that crowd and share my views and excitement. That’s what we all did again today. Through the social networks we did exactly the same stuff, just that we were not present at the same place offline. The platforms were the medium to carry the SOCIAL online. True that the media is important, but, without social media wouldn’t be media while the reverse is not true. SOCIAL wil llive and has always, media come and go.

Closing it here and leaving some food for thought. Would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave your comments.

Facebook Ads – Should I or Should I Not?

No doubt that Facebook is up there and Mark Zuckerberg has more friends that anybody in this world

So, the question is, while the opportunity is there, should brands allocate funds for Facebook Ads? Chunk of the funds still go to traditional media but the Facebook media is growing fast and a brand can’t help but but get sucked into it.

Today Facebook has a reach of over 9.5 million of India’s most attractive and affluent which is higher thanany English publications and for that matter English channels on TV. Its so damn cheap, you can get a CPR of as low as INR 0.30! 30 Paise, that’s it, a fraction of a front page of any daily. Add to this, the brand can engage in different ways than how they could with traditional media. Facebook enables conversations leading to engagement and potential sales. A Facebook user can ‘like’, ‘comment’,  answer polls, watch videos, click through to sites… enough to take the user from knowledge to experience and then on the marketing team can create a story outta it. Or, better still, let the users create the story for them – that’s what guys like me do, day in and day out and so can write this post

If Facebook were a country, it would be 3rd largest in the world – we are said and done with this over and over again. I also talked about it. Here is a stat for India – if Facebook were a daily, it would be number 1 with the next falling behind by 2 million. WOW that’s huge!

Decide for yourself and for your brands.

Please feel free to add comments. Reach out to me if need be.

Happy FBing.

Influence – Over Drinks with Friends

Haven’t written for some time now. Been busy, swamped with work, family and social media insights.

Last week, over drinks with friends I noticed something that can and is easily being replicated on Social Media platforms. Your friends, people who who think are good and thats why you take out time to meet them act as major influencers when it comes to buying. Its either peer pressure, your ego or just that one wants the other to try/buy what he feels is a great product.

Sitting with them, just observing how one influences the other. The discussion starts off with Suzuki’s new Kizashi and how big a flop it is coming from a small car makers stable. All talked about the fact that Indian market identifies Maruti Suzuki with the Maruti 800 and not a too expensive sedan like Kizashi. I thought to barge in with how Nissan, Toyota and Honda started out Infinity, Lexus and Acura to fight with Mercedes. This would have somehow ended the debate, but I did not.

Next was Apple! How apple has changed how we look at IT. How IT has become a part of our lives, the high-on user experience that makes us talk about Apple products. The fading market share for Nokia, the Blackberry cult and so on.

During all this… I kept to myself but keenly observed how one influences the other. But how? When one backs his argument with information supporting it. My eyes lit up! Social media works the same way. One influences another with his recommendation. To make sure that his recommendation is taken in serious light, enforces it with a hyper link to info/content supporting it.

2+2=4. And I could see that addition right there.

To summarize, if I may, influence is a major driver and social media is an able and a very apt medium for that…

Would like to know of your thoughts. Feel free to comment or reach out to me at @ajaxjoshi

Keep seeing the same people in your newsfeed lately?

Keep seeing the same people in your newsfeed lately? Also, do the same faces keep commenting on your posts, photos & links?

Facebook recently changed the default newsfeed setting to show posts only from the people you’ve recently interacted with. This also means that most of your friends now don’t see what you share!

Should you like to fix this, please do navigate to the bottom of your newsfeed via desktop, click on ‘Edit Options’, and select ‘All friends & pages’ in the ‘Show posts from’ drop box. Hit ‘Like’ if this tip helped, share it with your friends, & tell us, what do you think about this Facebook update?

Patience, Hard Work & Perseverance: Social Media

You launch your campaign, the excitement is high, everyone is on board…Then about two weeks later, the excitement fizzles, the campaign looses steam and you are looking for results.

Are you kidding me… 2 weeks and you are looking for results.

A great social media campaign yielding determined results takes anywhere from 3 to 6 months and depends on the aggressiveness and goals of the campaign. Your impatience and lack of adhering to a social strategy is the reason why most of your campaigns don’t succeed.

Whenever you look to measure ROI for social media efforts, remember to be patient. I know it’s difficult, easier said than done, especially when your bosses insist on seeing results instantaneously. Start with what you have, the situations you can control and also the areas that you cannot affect.

Don’t get hung up on your metrics, how many dollars will I make, will I get traffic, how much will I sell… at least not in the beginning. What you need to measure though is the level of engagement with your ‘X’ number of fans.

Make sure you use your time and energy wisely. Analyze what metrics/KPIs make sense for your product/service.

Social media, if done right, can be classic brand building. But it takes time, time to build credibility, time to build influence, time to build a community. It doesn’t matter what the goal is, it’s not something that can happen overnight!You got be patient, hard working and have the ability to persevere to taste success.

Okay, lets broadly breakdown the results and goals of a typical social media campaign.:

1. Exposure and buzz: Exposure and buzz happen by reaching new audiences and making a repeat appearance in a strategic and relevant way. Reaching the audiences with useful information over and over will start to create the presence and allow audiences to start buzzing. The more you appear in their social networks, the more likely they will start buzzing and help fuel the exposure.

2. Branding: Reinforcing and recreating a brand is also based on repetitive exposure. Determining what the brand is and what it wants socially, will help form the online brand will ultimately help boost customer loyalty, and build the brand. Share industry knowledge and answer questions or help others. This will help you construct your image and over time, the brand will be recognized and understood.

3. Online reputation management: Social media networking can produce reputation management in two different ways such as helping irritated customers or solving problems and using search engines by having their social pages rank well on the search engines and push other results lower in the SERPs. Both creating a presence and letting customers know you have a social presence and they can utilize the accounts as necessary and search engine results, take time and effort to start achieving the goals.

4. Sales and new business: Different types of social media campaigns can have a direct influence on sales (and should if that is a defined goal). A strategic targeted message about specific sales information can be appreciated if done in moderation. The messages can direct users to viewing new products, blog posts, current specials or free offers, which can result in sales conversions. It takes some time to build the reputation and relationships before hitting the audience with a sales message, and then some additional lag time before they actually pick up the messages and respond to the call-to-action.

Give yourself and the campaign 3 to 6 months and you will see what I am talking about.

Let me know what you think by adding comments. To know more on Social Media follow me on Twitter @ajaxjoshi

Social Media and Influence

Taking it further from one of my earlier post where I talked about the Centers of Influence (COI), I would like to talk about Influence itself.

What is influence?

According to Dictionary.com influence is the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.

There is a big debate going on in the social media blogosphere about “influence”. We are all aware about the fact that we could leverage ifluencers in our communities in order to get the word out about our causes, brands or services… and that makes total sense from a referral network leading to a viral effect.

What could we do to build influence? and then be able to measure it?

The ability to make things happen — that’s how simple influence is. Yet, it is complicated. What things does it make happen, who are these for and how much time does it take? Influence could last a moment and then also a lifetime, some make big things happen, some small.

What influences one, may not influence another. The idea – The actions/results, i.e., cause and effect, or is it the connection between the two? So even after tracking and analyzing everything, one cant tell what is it that actually worked. Influence is contextual and depends on the situation and what you care about. Whether building or measuring influence, it’s effective to understand which type of influence is important, and why. And that is what makes social media more interesting!

Sounds easy? But, is it? Let’s see – I write this post, someone on my network retweets it. A person on his network reads it, writes a comment. At the same time someone finds this post through a search and decides to follow me and spread the word for the benefit of more. Here in this scenario, each of the persons above took an action. Each action had an effect. But which of these actions is up there, the most important one? Who among these people had the most influence?

How does one have the power to influence? You have some handy applications (Klout or Twitalyzer) that would tell you how influential a person is. But are these accurate? Is it only about how many followers one has on Twitter?

Writing this post, I am beginning to wonder what algorithm should one come up with to create and application which helps measure influence.

Does influence come from trust? Since it allows something/someone to effect our decisions.

Would you like to add more? Please feel free to add under comments if I may have missed something.

Conducting a Hashtag Twitter Marketing Campaign

I always believe that it is important to share other people’s content and information, relevant to your audience. One problem that I see here though is that because there is a large volume of information and conversation on Twitter, people are misled that it is a fast-paced advertising platform. To be successful you need to help others and let them get to know you, which will result with more people wanting to do business with you. This is a process and it doesn’t happen overnight.

Twitter as a popular social networking platform, has a viral marketing strategy all on its own, especially if your followers like your tweets and retweet them to their followers. However, there’s another trend in Twitter usage that increases its viral marketing capabilities through the use of hashtags.

Here are 6 steps to help you create your own Twitter hashtag campaign:

1. Research. What kinds of tips would be appreciated by your target market? On what topics do you frequently receive questions from your clients?

2. Choose your name. Choose a short, simple name that reflects your brand and what you’re offering. Before making your final decision, you need to check your proposed name on Twitter Search (search by including the #) to ensure that no one else is using that name.
3. Create your tips. You can easily pick your tips out of an article or blog post you’ve created.

4. Link to relevant info. You would get the most mileage out of these tips if you link them to something relevant to that tip.

5. Schedule your tweets. In this way you put these tips on autopilot and they post themselves.

6. Let them begin to work their magic. It may take awhile for them to catch on, but eventually others will begin to retweet your tips as useful information they want their followers to access. As with most marketing strategies, consistence is the key here to your success.

Please feel free to add as comment if I may have missed something.

I would also suggest you could read – HOW TO: Grow a Quality Twitter Following and HOW TO make members of your online community feel special.

Contact me if you would want me to help you runa  Twitter Marketing campaign.