Social Media - Where Competitors Become Allies

When you need help on some topic what is it that you do now-a-days? When you need a quick help on your professional side say for instance some data, facts and figures what is the most likely help you look at?

You naturally go about searching for answers on Google and other search engines. You may also be putting up the question on spaces like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Do you think you will receive an answer? Well yes you most probably will. Who do you think answers you? It is people from your field that share answers. It is people who normally would be your competitor who may end up providing you with an answer. You get help from people whom you may not know at personal level. This is the new [not so new though] era of people really helping. If they are online they are concerned, and express this by helping.

You will have seen someone giving a shout towards something that may be frustrating them, matter of concern. Have you seen people responding? Well sometimes you too may have experienced this. People responding could be your immediate contacts whom you would know and those who you may not know personally as well. So, what would you say for all this? This is feasible due to Social Media access.

What do you think? Did you face such a situation where you asked for help and pronto! you received it?!

Parameters For Business Who Want To Go The Social Media Path

Many a times am asked if business could do their own Social Network and how should they go about the much talked about Social Media path. Well it is not very difficult, as a business / brand / service you could venture into the world of Social Media with a little planning and foresight. Ofcourse at the very initial stage you need to have an objective. This objective is to be in tangent with what your marketing objectives are and what is feasible with Social Media. Just the way we would not directly put the print advertisement onto the TV commercial we cannot think of having any copy paste ideas on Social Media as well. You would plan out a script and a story-board for TV commercials similarly you need to plan out specially for Social Media as well. Taking the TV example a little ahead - you would have the same brand personality stretching into TV and print and other mediums similarly within the Social Media space also you need to have the same brand personality flowing.

The reason to have a single brand personality is so that when the consumer comes across your brand on any platform they relate to you and thereby you become more familiar to them. Thus you go a step further in their mindset to be considered and preferred brand. Hence you maintain the same tone of voice that you have maintained for your brand across other mediums.

There is no use talking about your product and how good it is and that people should be purchasing this. Social Media is a path to grow your brand affinity and associations. It is to go higher towards brand loyalty. It is not to do a monologue of hard sales. Your sales will eventually take place, but first you need to establish yourself. People do not join Facebook Fan / Business Pages, Twitter and other web spaces so that they can be bombarded with our sales pitches.

So the next crucial step is understand your target audience. Understand why would they join you on a Social Media site. Remember you are not only competing with your competitors but you are also competing amongst things that your target audeinece is connected to. For example it could be their friends chatting, posting, and sharing of their life which creates a rapport and a conversational point. Your target audience could be on sites that enable games and other time passing / knowledge gaining activities online. This is the world you are competing within. It is rightly said that web is now second life. People spend countless hours online. This is a great opportunity but if used only for hard slaes then you loose out and miss the bus.

Next is you need to plan out what will your content be. Try to avoid as much as sales talk as feasible. Hard sales talk is a total nono. You need content that 'engages your target audience' at the same time 'enhances your brand personality'. You need to get your target audience to 'look forward' to interacting with you [your web page]. Having said this you also need to be consistent in your efforts. Today with so much of online activity you cannot restrict yourself to being announcing something as a monologue once a week. This does not work.

This brings us to scheduling. Scheduling and posting your content often is very important.Ofcouse you need to be careful that you are not crossing the line and annoying your subscribers / community people online. This also brings us to another pointer which is freshness of content.

We need to post what is relevant to our target audience and we need to communicate fresh content. Copy paste will not work here. What will work is rinse and repeat. Which means that many a times you may run out of content thoughts however you can re-freshen what you have already published and share this. You could also synthesize and approach other people's ideas in a different manner and share that too. This is content curation.

Thus, you need to know clearly the nature of the various Social Media sites. A Facebook and Twitter for example would be utilized in slightly different manner. Understanding the site functionality is critical.

When you do the above what takes place over a couple of months is that people start to interact with you on that particular web page. Bringing us to a crucial matter that listening, responding and conversing with our members is critical. For this you need to have the monitoring / listening and measuring tools. They will enable you to know who has posted a comment / request etc.

When we are onto this the main factor of negative comments handling, you need to have the capacity to conduct and behave as per your brand personality incase you meet with negative comments. Handling negative comments is the deciding point many a times if you can make the angry person stay with you or unsubscribe to you.

How do you go about managing your Social Media space. Is there anything you may wish to address here? To discover, share, question answer sessions and converse on Social Media do join me at facebook.com/pervarakapadia

 

Social Media Is A Path To Achieving Brand Objectives

Many a times we may wonder where is Social Media taking us. Is it really going to benefit the brand that we are looking at? What are the tactical tools to be employed? What could be the objectives to be achieved?

Most of us have heard that we need to have Facebook and Twitter for business. Well by setting up your profile page does not get us any business. We need to look at this as a very long term community event. At the start we are to have a plan of action. Social Media is like an investment. What you do today leaves footprints on the internet that enables you to draw positive fruits later on. Ofcourse if you do not use it wisely then you could suffer as well. Social Media requires focus, planning, adherence to plan, continuity, consistency and freshness.

Social Media comprises of various elements which I have shared below. Together they start to form the complete picture for our target audience. We need to understand that there's a high degree of correlation between good customer / stakeholder experiences and their willingness to associate with the same organization, brand, product and service. Social Media Networking is part of the overall marketing scenario. It is not a separate silo that one works within. Our Social Media efforts are an extension of the brand's overall marketing efforts. Just like any other aspect of marketing like advertising [print, tv, radio, outdoors etc], Social Media is also one of these. Ofcourse the modus operandi would be different. However our target audience would be part of the overall target audience itself.

Social Media needs SEO [Search Engine Optimization] Management. The reason to work on SEO while managing and handling Social Media is so that your brand comes up ahead on the Google and other search engines. This is not paid for and it is known as chronologically high ranking on the search engines. It is similar to Page Rank. The higher your page rank the more plausible is good ranking on search engines. SEO comprises of on-page method and off-page method.

Social Media efforts like any other marketing effort requires that it be measured, monitored and be accountable. This is simple business practice not restricted and not limited by marketing efforts alone. Typically in business terminology called Return On Investments or ROI.

Add to all this we definitely do need to be ethical and not start to spam every online page that we come across. Monitoring Social Media can be overwhelming. From the outside it looks like a mayhem. Lots of people chatting, couple of praises, many silent monologues that could lead the Community Manager themselves into utter silence and the rest of the time stressing with negative feedback. Add to this some person posting an affiliate programme link and someone else venting out their frustration.

Below am sharing some tactical pointers that would enable you to work towards a Social Media strategy so as to achieve your Brand's objectives:

• Setting Of 'Alerts' 
• To track your brand and your competitors
• To enable us to understand the positive and negative mentions online
  
• Blogging 
• Online Community Management 
• Networking on Social Network Sites Like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn 
• Article Writing 
• Press Release Writing 
• Submission To Search Engines, Articles Sites, Directories For Sites, Blogs
• All Writing Will Be Done Keeping Search Engine Optimization [SEO] In Focus

When we employ the above and more of Social Media touch points what you, your brand and company would benefit in is shared below, ofcourse it varies based on the brand, category and the Social Media task taken:

• Acquisition
• Retention
• Customer Value Enhancement
• Referral [Friend Get Friend] Programme, Member Get Member Programme, Viral Marketing
  
• Encourage Non Active Members To Participate
  
• Brand Awareness
• Brand Personality Re-Enforcement, Build Brand Identity And Thereby Brand Recognition
  
• Bring In Positive Brand Perceptions
• Progress Towards Brand Associations, Familiarity, Attitudes, Identity, Personality, Image And Brand Preference
• Increase The Brand - Consumer Bond, Loyalty Towards Your Brand, Service, Product, Company Etc
  
• Over A Period Of Time Customer Intelligence Can Be Built - Who They Are, What Interests Them, And So On Based On What Is Feasible From The Connection Online
• Create Brand Difference
  
• Consumer Insights
• What Does Your Customer Like And Not Like About Your Brand, Product, Service Etc.
• Enhance Brand Proposition And Positioning 
• Try Preventing Attrition
  
• Nurturing Brand - Customer Relationship Over Time Thereby Deepening Relationships
  
• Identify Active Participants To Give Them More Benefits And Thereby Get Them To Feel More Belonging Towards Your Brand, Product, Service Etc
• Facilitating Cross Sell And Up Sell

So what is your opinion? How does Social Media take you closer towards your Brand's objectives? Share your thoughts here. Let's discuss.

Spam Is Not Social Media Ethics

To spam is not ethical. What else is not ethical within the online social media space? Lets have a quick understanding of what takes place within the online space and then understand what perhaps would be good ethics for you as a Social Media person to flourish.

• Spam: As a Social Media personnel you have a task to work on. For instance to make more people aware about your page / blog / site making it more available, accessible and so on. Well we would be tempted to go about copy pasting a message onto as many blogs, forum etc. However as Social Media person we understand that will only lead us to negative publicity and infact people will not do business with us. Still we see people are simply giving out messages that are not relevant to the ongoing conversations. This irates people who are active and interested in the ongoing conversation.
  
• Negative comments: Well there is always a way of putting a point across in positive and healthy manner. However we will find people throwing their angst across. Ofcourse if someone has invested in a particular product / service and they find that they are not met with proper treatment then they are bound to flare up. What should we do as Social Media people. Naturally not retaliate. Neither do we need to be have a page full of apologies flowing. There are lot of sophisticated way in which we could deal with them. We need not retaliate in the similar tone.
  
• Reply: When people post a comment, address you / or your page, blog, site lets try to reply and reply as soon as feasible. And lets reply appropriately - in a relevant manner. If possible try to have a dialogue. Here is your chance to reciprocate and take a small step towards your objective.
  
• Timely reply: The previous point covered the fact that replying is critical. Let me emphasis that timely reply is critical. This does not mean that we sit 24/7 in front of our page on the world wide web. What this means is have a plan. Have a definite schedule of running through your various pages. There are many online tools to enable you to know what comment you have got pending.
  
• Drive towards the main topic: Many a times the conversations and dialogues can go beyond the purpose of the page you are administrating. This could be as number of persons are communicating and they could start to chat about common topics that they may have found out as common interest. This is a tricky situation. While having emotional connect is great however we need to draw the line. You need to be politely taking the conversation right back to where you want. Since the people are willing to communicate lets not truncate the messages. Lets instead have the steam flowing towards in the right direction.
  
• Revert: In case you have informed that you will get back with certain information then lets make it a point to revert. And yes, revert as soon a possible before we loose the person's tempo.
  

What are the other good manners that we can add onto this. Do share in here.

How To Prepare To Start A Social Media Community

Most of us have heard that we need to have Facebook and Twitter for business. I have been asked a couple of times how will this bring in business. Well by setting up your profile page does not get us any business.

We need to look at this as a very long term community event. At the start we are to have a plan of action. This plan would comprise of:

• Community Members: Who is going to be joining your community. Defining your target audience is crucial. Determine your target audience behavior, attitude and usage on the internet.
• Brand Personality: It is important that your target audience views and interacts with your brand in a cohesive manner. What personality they would see around of your brand is what they should see at your Social Media site as well. This would include competition understanding as well.
  
• Understanding the nature of the Social Media site: It is important that one see and understands the various sites and what they have to offer. For instance Twitter would serve a little different purpose than what Facebook would help in. The various Social Media sites have slightly different functionality. And this difference is to be understand.
  
• Content is very important: You need to understand and know that content is critical. This is what will get people to come back and re-visit you, this is what will start interaction and thereby lead the members to engage with you deeply. So whether you are on Blog or Social Media sites you need to have content defined and scheduled. The content will flow from your brand personality, marketing objective, customer mindset and the Social Media site itself.
  
• Tackling negative comments: It is essential that you develop an escalation matrix to attend to your angst and angry customer set.
  
• Monitoring / Listening and Measuring Tools: It is essential that you have procured and understood what tools you will use to monitor and measure the Social Media efforts. There are free and paid tools that you can avail of. It is critical that you have a system and parameters to measure. Social Media efforts like any other marketing effort requires that it be measured, monitored and be accountable.
• Dedicated Person: Who would be the one dedicated person on this task. We cannot think that a general marketing personal will take care here. This person is to be as far as feasible online and attending to the community. This person is to be conversant with the above parameters. This person is to be a part of the core team and requires to understand their reason for being on the task.
• Change: To change and meander as time passes is critical. For instance the content may need to be re-looked at. The measuring parameters may need to be tweaked. And so on.
  
• Consistency and freshness: Social Media requires focus, planning, adherence to plan, continuity, consistency and freshness.
  
  
  
  

Social Media is like an investment. What you do today leaves footprints on the internet that enables you to draw positive fruits later on. Ofcourse if you do not use it wisely then you could suffer as well. Social Media requires focus, planning, adherence to plan, continuity, consistency and freshness.

When we do all of the above we can then be ready to start our venture into Social Media. Any other parameters that come to your mind share them here.

URL Shortening From Google To Manage Your Social Media

Google has just released a dedicated site for URL shortening. Your long URL can now be shortened. You can find this at: http://goo.gl/. Here you can not only shorten your URL but also track the click through as well. This promotes it right into being a competitor to Bit.ly

Since it is from Google you need not worry about malicious software that subsequently masks your shortened url and put forth its own link. Being Google you can be sure the tracking device is in place.

So? have you tried this? What is your experience? Share in your views here.

In Social Media You Invest Today For Rich Dividends Later

Social Media is like an investment. What you do today leaves footprints on the internet that enables you to draw positive fruits later on. Ofcourse if you do not use it wisely then you could suffer as well. Social Media requires focus, planning, adherence to plan, continuity, consistency and freshness.

If any of these criteria are missing then you may lose out with your target audience. Many a times you may get the feeling that no one is responding to you, but do not give up here. You need to understand that as time passes the search engines will start to index your page and then you can hope for traffic towards your page. To enable this you need to be consistent with fresh matter.

Search engines take time - around 3 mths to start to show your pages on search sites. Thus the earlier you start the better. Social Media enables you to achieve personal and professional objectives. The on-page SEO will enables you to reap benefits.

Many a times you may wonder if Social Media is really for you and your business. Social Media cannot be constraining factor. There is a simple way to understand if Social Media is meant for you and your business. There are various tools that you could employ to enable you to practice Social Media.

Social Media would be new in terms of technology; however it is a principle that is used since over decades. If you would like to keep yourself upto date with Social Media you can connect with socialmediatoday.com. This is a good resource to understand how Social Media can be worked upon. The other source is socialmediainformer.com. Both of these share what real experts have to say giving you an actual working experience based knowledge.

While working on Social Media you also need to have an open mind and be able to attend to negative comments.

So are you all set and ready to manage your Social Media? Share your views here.

Social Media Is Best Played By Your Nearby Provisional Store?

Social Media is about engagement and relevant conversations. It is about building a positive rapport and thereby good relationships. It gets into good CRM and one to one direct marketing space.

Lets consider our neighborhood provisional store. Do you think they have been building relationships long back?

We would have at some time or the other visited the provisional store near us, this could be from residence or office. These days you can call via telephone and they deliver your requirement at your door-step.

There are a couple of things that our neighborhood provisional stores do that perhaps we should learn form. This is worth looking at form Social Media aspect as well as from CRM direct marketing aspect:

• They recognize you: If you are a little regular purchaser they soon start to recognize you and try to connect with you.
• Remind you of previous purchase: In case you are ordering something and draw a blank [forget what is to be ordered]  they help you to remember this.
• Cash turns to credit: They do not mind giving you your order on credit basis. They infact assure you that you will pay so nothing to worry.
• Delivery at doorstep: They have no problem in sending your ordered items to your doorstep.
• Going out of their way to get for you: Incase from the items that you have ordered there is something that they may not have at that time, they will get it for your by evening, they make you not look for that item elsewhere.
• When you pass by they acknowledge you: Have passed by your regular provisional stores? Do they acknowledge you? They give you a recognition that you are an old trusted customer.
• Warmth: When you enter the store there is immediate connection. You find the environment and people familiar.  
• Senior Citizen pass time: You may notice that sometimes Senior Citizens do spend time a lot at the counter generally chatting. 
• Change is always at hand: Incase you require change [currency] they have no problem in going all the way to get it for you.
• Credit card dysfunction does not create embarrassment: If at all your credit card is not able to be read at the reader [swiping machine] there is no embarrassment, they know your intentions are good. 

Would you add anything else to this list?

Well if you are in Social Media within the online space do you re-act and relate to your set of community and customers in a similar method?  Do you think there is a learning from your neighborhood provisional store? What is your opinion? Share your views here!

SEO Strategy In Social Media?

Hello Folks,

Many a times we have heard of this nomenclature: SEO. The full form of SEO is Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the method by which you improve the ranking of your site on the search engines.

Many a times am asked if SEO is only for website? Well this is not entirely true, while they are definitely used for websites they are 'also for any Social Media that you may be utilizing to connect with your target audience'. This means that SEO is useful for community managers, bloggers and anyone who would like to be found on various search engines.

SEO comprises of on-page method and off-page method. The off-page method is more of the technical side wherein one requires a little knowledge, comprehension and understanding of the scripting or programming language. While the on-page SEO is slightly easier and persons who write on the site can make use of. The on-page SEO is got to do with understanding the search words and making best usage of them. These search words are what people searching on the net type on search sites so that they find relevant pages to refer and interact with.

Have you used on-page SEO? It is usage of  keywords whenever you communicate with your community members. Whether you are on Twitter, Facebook and other sites. You need to be fully aware of the keywords that are to be used. Ofcourse while blogging and managing community we cannot write keywords without making sense and being relevant to the target audience. Just utilizing keywords without having any relevance to the people we are trying to communicate with does not serve the purpose. And, we will not be able to proceed towards our objective. 

Thus your on-page SEO should be used properly. It is a skill that one starts to develop.

For this you need to know and understand what are the keywords that you need to focus upon.

So? do you practice on-page SEO in all your Social Media endeavor?

Social Media - How Much Of Media To Consume?

Do we often wonder on how many sites are we to register and how much of information are we to read through on daily basis? Social Media and information can be overwhelming at times; rather many a times.

You would be receiving invites to join into Social Sites, forwards emails and links to various sites where there would be information that people thought would interest you. Add to this you would be receiving comments and posts notification from Social Media sites that you have already registered onto.  What do you do with so much of information overload?

Well we need to plan and be focused. Do share on how do you go about segregating information and deciding on what is to be followed. There is always a reason why you are on a particular site. Keep that as your focus continuously. Whether you are joining sites for personal reasons or for business and marketing objective keep this as focus.

There are a couple of parameters that you may want to keep in mind so that you can 'filter' the information and their respective sites as well.

Site registration not an obligation - an informed decision:
First and fore mostly we need to be clear that we need not register on each site that comes our way.

Similarity in functionality - find the difference - does the difference make sense:
We may have received an invite to join a site but it does not mean that we are to go ahead and actually join this. We need to check out if the site has similarity in function with some other site that we are already registered on. This way you start to make a choice and decision by the theory of elimination. There is no purpose in being registered and joining multiple sites which all would have the same functionality. What you need to do is check out the site. See what is the different offering in the site. And then, think if this different offering makes sense to you. Do you really require this new functionality? Is your existing Social Media site not having this functionality?

Don't spread yourself thinly:
Joining multiple site makes you spread out a lot however one cannot really go deep and interact with people on daily basis across too many sites.  So, you need to plan and understand what is convenient to you and at the same time what brings you closer to your desired objective. Spreading out thinly makes you a very superficial person who touches the contacts at a very 'touch and go' level. What is more worry-some is that you start to give out same messages across. This does not promote you to an 'engagement' level. It is crucial that you are 'connecting and building a positive rapport with your contacts'.

Join and couple of sites but keep intensity in very few:
You could join in a couple of sites, say around 6 to 7?- not too many though; not each that comes your way or that you may come upon. From within the 6 to 7 sites that you have joined over a period of time you will start to realize that that only couple of these make real sense to you and wherein your interaction levels are high. Once you realize this focus only on the very few.

Attend to your selected sites daily:
It is crucial that you nurture your contacts on almost a daily level. And within a  day a couple of times. This creates a rapport this creates what is known as 'meaningful' interactions and thereby a deeper and more focused engagement levels. It is important that we understand - what we do or do not do online is what makes our personality on the internet space. The perceptions of people starts to develop from here. There would be people you may not know at all or who may be your acquaintances. They all start to develop a perception of who you are dependent on how you behave online. This is useful for your personal growth and business growth as well.

Online is a life:
Online world is an actual world. We need to understand that we are dealing with actual people. And that they too have emotions hence you need to be expressing yourself clearly. This is one space where people do  spend a lot of time these days and you do need to be emphatic towards them. 

Move away from what is not useful:
If after joining a site you realize that this is not fitting into your scheme of things and is not helping you go nearer towards your objective then you need to move away from those sites.

How do you go about deciding on what sites to follow and which ones do you turn away from? What are your parameters? Do join in here and share your perspective.

Tagging In Facebook Status Messages - Social Media

I have often been asked as to how do you go about tagging people in Facebook status updates. If you want that your Facebook status updates be tagged to someone simply mention '@name of person'.

This is very similar to the Twitter function of '@replies'; the way we direct / mention someone in Twitter - similarly we do with the Facebook status updates. Once you key in the '@and name of person', you will observe the auto drop down name suggestions based on the alphabets you type.

This system at Facebook enables you to tag any pages / groups / communities / people that you are connected to via your Facebook. After you post the message with '@' the symbol of '@' will not appear in the message.

Have you tried this? Go on try this and share your experience here.

How To Keep Yourself Up-To Date On Social Media

While working as a Social Media professional we know that it is essential to 'listen'. Apart from listening to our community members, it is essential to listen to other professionals who are on-board as well within the Social Media space. It is from each other's experience and expertise that we can keep ourselves up-to date on what is taking place in the online space and how the future is getting shaped.

While you do have the option of searching individual professionals and then connecting with them, there is a much easier and a more methodical way. If I tell you there is one site that will enable you to receive information from the blogs of the various professionals what would you say to this? Check out socialmediainformer.com. Share your experience with us here on what you think of this amazing space.

'Social Media Informer' site is a syndication of information. As the name suggests it is your space for Social Media information. Single space which you can say is in reality an 'online Social Media knowledge hub':

• A space where you find best of online experts contributing their real working expertise.
• You will find a plethora of 'how to articles' - to take you through steps that experts are using to get into higher engagement space with your customer sets so that you work your way into retention strategy and viral for acquisition purpose.
  
• Check out the vast archive that is since over 5yrs and is growing - almost the time when Social Media took off.
  
• This site is great for ready information, reference and usage for the wide spectrum of newbies to professionals.

It does not matter who you are - you want to be online you got to be subscribed here.

Do check it out and share your views here. It will be great to know what is your advice for this site.

How To Know If Social Media Network Can Help Your Business

We have all heard that Social Media Network is to be integrated into the overall marketing plan. While we have heard that Social Media has a lot of benefits for the business we may often wonder if it is 'really suitable for our individual brand and category', 'is this right for my business?'. There are often doubts that I notice when people look at Social Media. Many a times industrial and manufactures think that they may not find Social Media path a very fruitful marketing endeavor. While others at professional level, retail level, consumer durables and FMCG do work towards the Social Media space.

Social Media is not and should not be a constraining factor to any business. The logic is very simple here on how to determine if your business should take the Social Media path. First and foremost check on who is your target audience.

Your target audience decides if you should be on Social Media or not:
If your customers are online then you 'may need to consider Social Media'. However this plain understanding is not enough to decide that you should be on Social Media space. Lets consider the below factors:

What type of online activity do your target audience indulge in?:
If your target audience is merely looking at emails and not really spending time on other Social Media sites then you need not get into Social Media Network. Perhaps you may need to consider email marketing alone in this case with regards to online activity.

Target Audience looks for information alone? They are not on Social Sites like Facebook, Twitter and others?:

• Incase your target audience sees search then you may want to consider Pay Per Click method of Google AdWords, and other advertising methods along with those spaces that does not require a registration and login. For instance blogging is a great method. Your target audience need not login nor register they can view and read your blog posts directly after coming from the search link. Search engines have a very high affinity of crawling and indexing blogs. This is a very good and positive way of Social Media path.
• Additionally, You can be a writer for various other sites, like for instance you could look at writing for your industry and category specific sites. Add to this you could look at writing industry and category specif articles and submitting the same to article sites.
• There are lots of [PR] press release sites that enable you to submit your information and publish the same. 
  

Target Audience looks at search and other Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and others?:

Great! Now you definitely can look at blogs, PR sites,and article marketing path and in addition to these you can be on Social Media sites as well. However: you need to still determine on:

• What exactly is their view, behavior and attitude towards the Social Media. How do they use and consume the Social Media. What relevance and role does Social Media play in their life.
• Based on this information you need to plan your strategy. 
• You can then, determine where your target audience is and 'if' you should also be on those site. We need to be careful here you need not be on each site that your target audience is. The site selection depends on two main factors: one being the target audience and the other being the brand personality. If your brand personality does not allow your interaction on a particular site then lets not be there. The Social Media site personality [perception] matters as well.
• Dependent on the involvement level of your target audience with a particular site you can then determine what should be your frequency of posting content. What kind of content will bring about the desired call to action.

Additionally there are various others factors as well no doubt, for instance creating your own website etc.

Conclusion:

• Determine your target audience behavior, attitude and usage on the internet.
• Have your brand personality and brand print drawn out properly.
• Understand the mood, tone and functions of the various sites.

Do join in here and share your parameters to help business to determine if they should be on the Social Media path.

Maslow In Recent Times Would Have Added Social Media

We do see Social Media all across. Whether you work as a Social Media personnel or not, as long as you have an urge to go online and start to search where your friends, relatives and colleges are, you end up on a Social Site. And then, you start to spend more time online.

What would have been Maslow's theory today? Would Social Media be one of the main basic factors for human survival. He had mentioned food, shelter, clothing as basic human needs. Today perhaps Social Media would also fall into this category. Add to this Social Media also spreads towards the next level of psychological satisfaction as well.

What do you think? Share your views.

Content Curation For Social Media Integrity

While working on Social Media it is important to maintain integrity and ethics. Blatant copy pasting someone else's hard work is just not correct. It could mar your professional credibility. You could loose out on potential clients and start to give out an image of yourself as not being genuine. This could lead people to perceive you as not knowing much about the field you are working in. Having said this, to each time get ideas to populate your blog could be difficult. In-between your hectic schedule  how do you each time get matter for content?

In order to have a good ranking on search engines it is imperative to be consistent with fresh content on your blog. This in turn would bring good and positive quality traffic. Good content takes up your time and energy.

How do you manage to consistently produce quality work? Ofcourse blatant copy pasting does not justify the existence of your blog. Here is where content curation comes to your rescue.

Content curation is about appreciating and synthesizing work of others. Allow me to repeat myself: it is not about copy pasting someone's hard work;  It is reviewing and filtering it is all about synthesizing.

Have you come across any such content curation? ReTweet is a form of content curation. Content curation is a skill and art. It is not stealing. It is understanding and then putting forth your opinion and your own understanding.

Do you encourage content curation? Share in your views here.

Manage Your Social Media Better - Distribute Your Blog To Twitter, Facebook And More

Managing your important communication on the Social Media could be tedious at times. It is important that you have a system wherein you can organize your communication. There are couple of tools available online that enable you to communicate with your various communities. For instance when you post a blog you need not manually start to copy and paste the same matter across your other sites. A simple tool like dlvr.it does this task very efficiently. To the extent that this site even shortens long urls so that they fit in well with the posts and even leave space for Retweet in Twitter. 

This site enable you to simultaneously post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Buzz, Ping and a couple of others as well.

This service constantly scans the various sites and informs if there is any API and such other problem.

Add to this you can also utilize its scheduling services. Herein you simply have to put date and time on when and which site should your posts be delivered. 

Have you tried dlvr.it ? What is your experience with this site. Do share in your feedback. What similar platform do you use?

How To Tackle Negative Comments While Managing Community In Social Media

Hi Folks, do you work as an Online Community Manager? Do you often receive the negative remarks of some person whom you have not known in a long time? Well you do not have to be a community member to receive negative feedback / response or a comment. You could have subscribed to a site and there you have someone creating a high noise level. You may not know this person. The only connection between you and this person is the Page / Site that you both are on. While sometime the comments 'may' not be 'useful', other times certain comments are necessary to be heard and addressed to.

When the comments are directly towards you at a personal level you may tend to re-act a little more strongly. When it is towards your business or brand then you at first step try to plan but yet could have a strong urge to re-act.

There are couple of reasons why people react negatively. Before we re-act to negative comments we need to have a basic understanding towards the human mind set.

People face different situations in their daily life and this they interpret with their own individual understanding and thus portray certain attitudes and traits and thereby a particular behavior takes place. Before we re-act we need to take a step back. We need to realize that each person comes with some background / situation / circumstances in life. Yes, this is very easily said than done. However we need to try and step back. Many a times a person voices negative remarks within the online space is because they feel maybe this way you will at-least adhere to what they are sharing and quickly work towards solution. Perhaps they have been given the feeling of not being heard otherwise. They could also be voicing - just so that they feel they are heard. For some it is a good ego boost.

There are a couple of ways in which one should re-act or rather let me say 'address' negative comments.

Weigh the comments first:
Re-read, try to listen to what the person has actually been driving towards, what is being referred to and mentioned, rather than what is being read by you. Read between the lines. There would be aggressive words and tone of voice however beneath this is the person trying to share with you that they are quite troubled and fed - up with a certain aspect / reason to comment. See if in the first place the comment is to be addressed. Try to move your anger and aggression out.  Is this person justified in what they have shared and voiced?

Do not make each response public:
Just because the person has made their comments publicly towards you or your brand or your business it does not mean and is not necessary to re-act in a same public manner. Sometimes connecting with this person on a one to one basis could be helpful. Yes one could feel that 'others may think i am a coward' and so on. Let us not be hampered by our own uncertainties, as there is already the commentator in a not so good state of mind. By going public we could unnecessarily make a situation ugly. Remember you are judged by what you do and not do. If the person is a regular aggressive commentator people will realize. You do not have to degrade yourself.

Not to re-act:
Sometimes senseless rantings need to not be addressed at all. Yes you need not comment and start to get into a dialogue with each comment; while this is being said it should be very clear that you should be noticing, listening to each comment and would be having a logical reasoning as to why you do not re-act to certain comments at all. Silence speaks. It is just like the case of pen being mightier than the sword. Silence speaks a thousand words. So be very careful when you choose to silence yourself with respect to some comments. Definitely if it is a feedback please do not get into a silence mode. Yes if it is some comment that has just intercepted into an ongoing conversation in a aggressive manner then perhaps silence towards that comment could be justified. 

Accept the problem:
If the person is correct in what they have shared then you need to accept this case. However please do not make each bad remark into an apology. In the sense if some third person comes to that particular page they should not find a string of only apologies. I have seen this in cases of certain brands. You may go on Twitter and check that these are full of a sentence that goes as 'we are sorry to hear this, can you please send your email id or contact number so we can contact you'. While this is good customer service it may not be the right engagement in the online space. It so happens that wherever you scroll on this page this sentence seems to have been the template for all cases. The acceptance can be on a one to one basis as well.

Be in-sync with your brand:
If the person whom you would be addressing is a online contact alone; who does not know you personally / professionally and whom you may also not know this persons only see and perceives you in the manner in which you react within the online space. Lets be clear that your personality is constantly being portrayed and comprehended by what actions you do and not do. It is critical that you have a planned brand personality within your system. How should you re-act should be driven by the brand personality. It is also essential that you have an escalation matrix within your system. And all concerned are aware of this. The reason being is that you finally need to deliver what you are mentioning online.

In Conclusion:
Be consistent with your brand image. Have a planned escalation matrix. Remember online material many a times cannot be deleted from the mind. Think before reacting. Consider and listen clearly. Move out the negatives wording see between the lines and listen in to what is being said, get an understanding of why it being said rather than concentrating on the how / the words being used.Please be empathetic.

Do share in your parameters and caution points as well. Do join in here. 

Facebook Notification For The Benefit Of Managing Your Social Media Community

These days with a lot of noise and clutter around various Social Media sites it is imperative that we have a better monitoring tool. Fortunately many famous / popular Social Media sites have given access to various third party tools. This monitoring enables us to work more efficiently and thereby effectively.

One such tool that enables you to receive notification on Facebook Fan Pages is the 'PageNotifier'. When you are administrator of Facebook Fan Pages you would need to be in touch with your community.You need to be able to respond to them in approximate real time.

How does PageNotifier work?

PageNotifier scans our Facebook Fan Pages regularly. The Notifier scans for new comments on status updates, videos, photos, and albums. If atall there are any new posts / comments etc the notifier captures this and sends us an email along with the link to the comment / post etc. So you can directly go to that particular space and respond in an appropriate way. Add to this it emails to you any comments on the photos as well.

What comes to you is an email:

You receive an email notification with mention of who commented, what they said, what post they commented on, and a link to the post for easy reply.

PageNotifier is developed by Brandon Zundel. What I have noticed is that he personally replies to any information that you may want with regards the application.

Do join in here. Share in which other such notification you rely on.

Social Media Community Manager's Management

Monitoring Social Media can be overwhelming. From the outside it looks like a mayhem. Lots of people chatting, couple of praises, many silent monologues that could lead the Community Manager themselves into utter silence and the rest of the time stressing with negative feedback. Add to this some person posting an affiliate programme link and someone else venting out their frustration. Sounds familiar?

Have you faced these situations? What do you do?

You start your day with new zest, saying that, you will create a buzz. The much wanted buzz such that maybe the head of the organization gets to hear about the same from elsewhere [in a positive way].

All you need is to plan out your day. Have a schedule. Check each site and restrict this for thrice a day or maybe four times if you can manage. Over a period of time you will realize the below:

• There are certain people who are good and interactive. They like to hear from your end. They are interested in what you mention, suggest and inform.
• These interested people have a 'kind of' set way to checking and responding to what you share. They come on particular days of the week at a particular time period.
  

When you start to have a grasp of the above two points, you will find yourself managing the 'noise' on your page. This in no way means that you start to restrict yourself from checking your pages at other time intervals. This in no way means that you do not respond to others at the time of their interaction.

What this means is that you can plan your time and schedule your online Social Media management a little better. Having said this please keep an open mind for new people to start making you notice new activity schedules.

To manage Social Media it is important that you start to understand that you need to be flexible. Flexibility in terms of time, the response turnaround, the quality of content that you share and the quantity of time, energy and content.

Do share in your views on what philosophy and modus operandi you have - so that you manage your online Social Media effectively and efficiently.

Earning From The Internet - A Social Media Ruin

Many a times we come across information on the net as: 'Make your pc an ATM Machine!' 'Mr.X earns four figures monthly!' 'Become a billionaire by not doing anything!' 'If X can become rich then you too can!' 'Have your dream cruise come true!' 'Just invest $194 and earn every month four figure without doing anything!'

Many people who read this fall into the trap. Many people seem to have fallen into this trap. You probably may know some person who will have [and maybe still awaiting] awaited the infamous four figure monies to land in their bank account.

You will find these people on the net. Unfortunately though you can report them to cyber crimes most of these eventually are not reachable as the very account and email they identify themselves with is fake. To the extent the proof of earning that they show is just a photo-shop [a software used for images] made job.

At the beginning they offer great help and service. Once you have paid suddenly they do not exist. You will find them in Social Sites, Forums, perhaps they even to come to your blog and post messages that lead to their amazing offer.

Just wanted to share - be careful. Many a times those who are at home and hope to earn from the internet are soft targets for this. Many a times working people who feel they have little extra time for extra income are soft targets for this.

Do join in here. A scam is a scam there are no two ways to this. In case you have witnessed this kind of experience do share in here.

As A Social Media Network Professionals What You Do

Hello and how have you been.

Many a times we are asked as to what exactly do we as Social Media persons do. Do we create advertisements online? Do we blog generally? More evolved asks do we moderate the forums? Do we go to practically each space online and start to post messages that are sales driven? And for those who do never really go online we are doing something on the net - unexplained! Ah do you do all that scam!?

Well do join in here and add on to what a Social Media Network person does. Do share in your experiences.

Below what I have shared is just the tip of the ice burg. Each parameter shared below has lot of depth and requires experience and skill sets. Unfortunately many a times the person may find it difficult to extract information from the concerned parties, but do try.

Marketing Objective:
The Social Media Person to start off understands the complete marketing scenario. It is necessary to understand what are the various communication messages that the consumer set is getting exposed to. Social Media is part of the overall marketing effort. Even if the companies may not look at it in that manner it does fall into achieving the marketing objective and is a vehicle which takes you towards the goals. Marketing objectives need to be clear to the personnel.

Understand Consumer Mind-Set [Lifestyle, Behavior, etc]:
It is imperative for the Social Media Person to understand what is the Consumer Mind-Set. Factors like who is the customer, what does he or she do, how do they behave and what kind of lifestyle do they live and aspire towards are the pillars that the Social Media Personnel would be constantly and consistently updating themselves with throughout their tenure and engagement with their clients.

Competitor Understanding:
While the Social Media Person should be provided with the names of competitors, it is this personnel who would be tracking the competitor activity with regards to their engagement on the Social Media Network online space. The personnel would be keeping track of what is taking place in the category.

Social Site Understanding:
It is crucial to be aware of what the various sites like Facebook Personal Page vis a vis the Facebook Fan Page should render itself towards. What is Twitter lending itself to and so on. What is LinkedIn bringing across. And so on.

It is the crucial understanding of the Consumer Mind-Set and the Social Media Site that tells us how should one interact with the Community Members / Fans / Followers. The reason being the mix of these two parameters tells us in what current mind-set the customer is making interaction with us.

Brand Personality:
Brand Personality is the core of directing the brand on how should it behave under various circumstances. To understand and breadth the brand personality by the Social Media Personnel is extremely crucial. The Customer sees the brand in various communication formats as a single personality during a campaign and in the long term as well - this is exactly the Customer should be seeing, interacting, and understanding the brand when they come across the Social Media Network personnel across various Social Media sites / blogs etc.

All the above parameters are not placed in order of importance. Let me state that that they all are important equally. There is much more when the Social Media Personnel actually starts to work. Unfortunately many a times the person may find it difficult to extract information from the concerned parties, but do try.

Share in your views and experiences as well. Do join here.
 
 

How To Add Static FBML To Your Facebook Page For Social Media

Just thought of sharing a little 'how to do the FBML on Facebook'.

First thing first, what is FBML? FBML is a subset of HTML. Full form of FBML is Facebook Markup Language.

Next questions 'who is to use it?' and 'so why am i to use it?' Allow me to answer the second question first, in this lies the answer to the first question as well. FBML enables you to create custom tabs on your Facebook Fan Pages. This application is available for Fan Pages on Facebook. You will not find this [as yet] on your Personal Facebook Pages nor will you find this on your Group Pages at Facebook.

How to create and use FBML section? Ready? Lets start...

• First log-in to your Facebook Page.
• Once logged in to your account you will notice on your left hand side 'edit page'. click this and get into the edit page part.  
• Scroll down and you will find in the 'application' section the FBML . Click this.
• Go to the static 'FBML application'. You will see that you have landed onto a Fan Page of Static FBML. There on left hand side you will notice 'add to my page'. Click this and thereby you have added the application to your Facebook Page.
• Once you click this the list of all you Facebook Pages where you are the administrator will appear. Please click on the Page you want this application to be added to.

In this way the Static FBML is added onto your Facebook Fan page.

Now we need to set it up and configure this so that we can display what we want to.

• Once again get into the 'edit page' on your Fan Page.
• On this page scroll a little down you will find the application. Get into the 'application setting' please do not go to 'edit application'.
• Once you have clicked the 'application setting' you need to mark the 'add' 'tab'. click 'ok'
• Once you have done this get into the 'edit application' which is close to the 'application setting'.
• Once in the 'edit application' you will find that there is a box.
  

This is the space where you can have a tab header / name and you can place your HTML Code onto this space. See to it that you do not go beyond 520 pixels in width. You can add more FBML Pages and Boxes by Clicking the 'Add another FBML Box'. You can have maximum 10 FBML Boxes. 

This is a growing subject. Add and share your experiences and tips and tricks here.

Social Media Needs A Driver

Many a times we commence the Social Media planning and strategy with a bang! We start with enthusiasm and a lot of hope that we will achieve our objectives within the marketing preview.  So, there is a team appointed to carry out the various tasks. And, the execution starts.

With a good take off, everyone has started to join into Twitter and Facebook [dependent on what is wanted, this is just example]. And soon the excitement builds up as we start to count on how many people have joined us. In elevators and corridors a quick response is shared on questions like 'how many today?'. This excitement continues till suddenly someone wants to know the ROI. And then suddenly everyone is  figuring out on parameters - the matrix to measure Social Media. This could be the first part of loosing out on steam of enthusiasm.

Next part when the steam starts to get out is during engagement period. While initially we may engage but the problem starts when someone complains and we do not respond as a company / brand properly. While apologizing is one part if there is no real concrete step taken then things could go out of hand. It is essential to have developed a matrix / escalation levels while creating the plan and strategy itself. It is essential that all departments know and understand that if the Social Media person flags an issue the concerned department should take the responsibility and solve the issue. This is critical. This the Social Media person should establish at the very beginning itself.

Social Media is a consistent and constant efforts. Let us 'never' think that once the basics are set up it will all generate talks on its own. People always need a little push and a little nudging. Social Media no doubt catches momentum, but one has to keep the momentum going. We cannot say that without an 'active driver' the Social Media will continue to create and achieve our objectives.

Social Media could start to loose the steam. How do you keep it going? What do you think? Join in ...

Your Social Media Output Should Be An Extension Of Brand Personality

Social Media Networking is part of the overall marketing scenario. It is not a separate silo that one works within. Our Social Media efforts are an extension of the brand's overall marketing efforts. Just like any other aspect of marketing like advertising [print, tv, radio, outdoors etc], Social Media is also one of these. Ofcourse the modus operandi would be different. However our target audience would be part of the overall target audience itself.

This means that if our customer is viewing our brand say for example on TV it is very essential that they meet the same personality on the internet as well. If on TV our core brand personality is projecting ourselves for example as humorous and easy going then it is crucial that in the online medium as well we have similar projection. Which goes to say that the Social Media person who is actually communicating and interacting with the customer sets needs to behave in a similar method. However we need to be careful here; not to over do or cross the line, as a matter of speaking. Humorous as i have shared is just a very light example. As we create a brand personality there is more added to humorous as well in the sense there could be a tongue in cheek kind of personality another could be wise and so on. The main idea that am trying to share with you is that we all need to be very much cued into understanding how our brand should be in the online space.

There is more to brand personality while working online as a Social Media person. We need to fine tune and zero down on the brand personality to an extent that as and when we face a crises say an irate customer, we should be well aware of 'how are we approaching the irate customer'. If for instance the brand personality is for teens and contemporary with interest in the latest happenings and portrays the 'cool' lingo, when faced with an irate customer we cannot loose out on the personality aspect however the same brand would be a little serious and would try to talk it out and solve the situation. We cannot be high handed during crises.

Hence, we need to understand the brand personality as a person. We need to know and be clear on how the brand reacts and acts. The brand should be considered as a human being. Naturally this is how you would draw out the brand personality. Afterall it is one human that can deal with another human under dynamic situations. The sense of the brand personality should be  the way you would know your very close friend. You can almost predict how your very close friend would act and react in various situations of life. Be it at their home, amongst relatives, amongst their friends, at work, in a meeting etc. Similarly we need to be clear on the detailing of our brand personality.

Many a times we will notice that Social Media is a live test of the brand personality. We will see that we are living and actually breathing the personality of another person [the brand].

Infact if you notice once you understand the brand person the way around comes with ease. You will notice that you will be able to clearly select the sites to live and expand on. You will automatically know if you should be on MySpace, Flicker, or restrain yourself to Facebook. You will also understand if at all you need to be on LinkedIn if you are directly dealing with say for instance school children. You will notice that School Children would take parent permission [atleast we hope that they would] in the online space given a lot of scams etc. If this is the situation then parents will be comfortable seeing you on LinkedIn while the actual target audience [school children] may not visit your LinkedIn profile. 

So this brings us to three aspects of personality understanding:
One is knowing your 'Brand' Personalty [along with Category Personality ofcourse]
Another is understanding the 'Social Media' Network 'site' personality
And thirdly is to understand the 'Customer' Set personality
These three pointers are not in the order that are shared above. All of them have equal importance.   

How do you bring alive the brand on the Social Media space? Do join in and share your experiences.


             

Benefits of Online Reputation Management - Social Media

Online Reputation Management comprises of various elements. Together they start to form a complete picture and enable our stakeholder’s experience to percolate within the system. We need to understand that there's a high degree of correlation between good customer / stakeholder experiences and their willingness to associate with the same organization, brand, product and service.

The various points of influence are:

• Traditional/mainstream websites.
• Professional networks like LinkedIn.
• Social networks like Facebook and others.
• Consumer Review sites such as epinions, MouthShut and others.
• Social news / bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, technorati, dig and others.
• Collaborative Research sites such as Yahoo Answers, Rediff Q&A.
• Independent discussion forums based on categories and general interest by profession. 
• Blogs created and managed.
• Blogging communities as the Open Diary, LiveJournal, Xanga.
• Microblogs e.g. Twitter.

Our primary goal when developing a social marketing strategy should be to establish conversation parameters. We cannot possibly control the direction of every conversation, nor should we try to, but we can be available to answer questions and provide honest and helpful input wherever possible. People visit social networking sites because they want to have conversations that don't involve sales pitches. In order to gain trust, we will need to create an environment in which potential and existing customers feel free to express opinion without fear of being censored, but also in which we can provide responses to negative comments that help viewers understand the reasons behind your company's actions in any particular area. When appropriate, we can point readers toward your product, but in such a way that they feel we are providing useful information rather than pitching your company. When we do professional activities on the above elements within the internet space we start to approach our stakeholders at various levels. We start to mean, what we aim to be perceived by our target audience.

• Improve customer satisfaction by gaining insights from consumers about what is good and bad about our product or services.
• Increase positive perceptions of brand by creating opportunities to listen to and engage with consumers.
• Gain insights about competitors and their customers’ perceptions about their products and services.
• Maintain shareholder value by mitigating risk by having ears close to the ground where opinions about our business are being formed and propagated.
• Engage in more effective public relations by understanding who the real influencers are.
• Gain understanding of the relationship between user generated content and traditional forms of online media, e.g. news, print, etc.
• Provide early warning systems for reactive Public Relations.
• Reduce marketing spend by learning how to reach out to customers more cheaply.
• Reduce internal costs by employing services which save time and effort, as well as money.
• Help identify gaps for products and services which can be developed for profitable niche markets.
• Gain insight into online networks and keywords and key phrases found in user-generated content, which can help to bolster natural search results about the person, product, or business. 

The benefits are definitely there in the Social Media Network space; yes if we do the networking in the right manner. Do join here, what do you think?

Social Media - Why Does Facebook Not Have Many Tracking Tools?

Social Media is all about interaction. It is good and healthy engagement with your community members. Your community members could be called by any name for instance Fan on Facebook, Followers on Twitter and so on. Whatever we may term them they are fellow members having a similar thought and they contribute ideas and thought processes towards the same main conversational point.

The situation: Social Media is a 24 by 7 [24/7] task. There could be comment or a post concerning you or your brand anytime and anywhere within the online space. You are not really expected to answer this intermediately however it would be just great and a bonus point for you if you do answer it immediately. Having said this you are not to reply to it 'never' or after a 'couple of days' this definitely will be negative for you. Ofcourse there could be instances which you may select not to interact upon based on how you may want to portray your brand.

If this is the situation what should you do? should you really be online 24hours all of the 365 days? This ofcourse is humanly not feasible. Hence we have a range of tools that come to us within the online space. Some of them are free and some come at a cost. They enable us to 'gather' our name [brand] being mentioned anywhere and hence we could be able to answer and communicate to fellow commentators.

While tracking of Twitter is not too difficult though. The reason being that we have number of good and useful tools online. However a huge membership of Facebook does not have easily identifiable tools online. The reason being that Facebook does not enable tracking by outsiders easily.

So how do you track your Facebook members and how do you track your Facebook Fan Pages? Facebook already has a good 'Insights Dashboard' where you get to see the number of interactions done. You can view the number of users, comments etc. Do you use this? What other tools do you use? Do join in here and lets share ideas on which online free tools you use for Facebook.

Could Google Wave Be One Of The Many Social Media Networking Sites

These days there are numerous Social Media sites taking place on the internet. All the Social Media sites are receiving good amount of logins. Ofcourse some like Facebook have become 'nations' within themselves.

Social Networking is all about people interacting with each other having a common topic, which sometimes has differences and sometimes mutually agreeing on certain view points.

Lets look at Google Wave. Google recently has sounded off the media world that it will withdraw the Wave, however, will retain the technology for further use. Where exactly will the Wave technology get utilized is to be seen as Google has not made an announcement to this effect as yet.

Contemplating if Google Wave could have been a good space for people to collaborate and interact as typically one would on other Social Media Network spaces. At first glance we would immediately tend to go towards the two ends of the spectrum as 'no it cannot be' and some others would say 'yes it could be'. Where do you stand? What is your opinion? Could Google Wave Be One Of The Many Social Media Networking Sites?

Lets take a little more closer look at various, already existing, Social Media sites. What do they offer? They offer friend connection, a voting system, photo upload, a post system, a space for conversation continuity, a status messaging, knowing who is friend of friend, an email notification comes in most cases of any messages etc., and so on, and ofcourse they are free sites.  Each site has these basic features and some specific features as add-ons to create a little distinction and a little difference.

Similarly Google Wave also has its own basics, like as shared above, in place. Add to this Google Wave has certain specific gadgets and plug-ins that create a difference and make it a different technology for usage. Then why did it not get onto to the mass appeal section? what is it that other sites did that perhaps Google Wave may not have yet done. Google Wave is a wonderful mix of being partly social networking functionality and partly as being an unified communications factored into it. Wave combines instant messaging, blogging, document sharing, email, wikis, and multimedia content to provide a seamless communications platform.

If there is a good list of positive and plus points to it why did this attempt of Google not take off atleast as yet? The reasons could be quite a few. What do you think?
The reasons could be:

Marketing? Was marketing the reason?
While Facebook and Twitter are getting onto various methods like providing follow badges which can be put up on the sites and blogs Wave does not have this as yet. Though Wave provide a link that can be embedded onto blogs and sites.

Mobile? While the other Social Sites have given mobile facility like you can visit the pages from your cell phone Wave would be on the heavy side for cell phone accessibility. GMail itself can be easily accessed via the cell phone but Wave is still difficult. Both GMail and Wave are from same Google though.

GMail integration? Fortunately from the same Google came Buzz. Buzz though has not really a very different usage from regular chat and posts it has more number of loyal people using it. Is it because Buzz is well within reach in GMail and Wave is not found in GMail could this be a very big reason for Buzz growth and Wave not growing as much?

Usage? At first take many people would state that Wave as confusing. Yes one has to take an effort and go up the learning graph for one to be enabled and capable of using Google Wave to the fullest.

Behavior? Was Wave asking its users and new people who were to experience this to change a behavior pattern? Well maybe yes to some extent. Wave had to be studied and was requiring a dedicated time factor at the beginning from new people to latch onto it. You would not find the typical links, posts etc at the top where normally you would be used to on the other sites.

Invites? Wave was not open to entire public. Could this also be a reason?

Have you used Google Wave, how did you find it? Join in here and share your experience with the Google Wave that is unfortunately waving a goodbye to us now.

How To Measure Your Social Media Efforts

Social Media efforts like any other marketing effort requires that it be measured, monitored and be accountable. This is simple business practice not restricted and not limited by marketing efforts alone. Typically in business terminology called Return On Investments or ROI.

It is certain that while Social Media is easily available and can be networked with, it still does require investment, skill and thorough knowledge. These investment at minimal level would be time, energy, technology [hardware, software the web and internet connectivity], dedicated human resource. Add to this just like any other marketing campaign we will require objectives and KPIs Key Process Indicators as well.

There is lot of research and discussion going on in the area of 'how to arrive at a ROI for Social Media'. There are two unique groups at the two ends of a spectrum. One group profess that Social Media has not as yet reached the stage of measurement and the other group states that Social Media can be measured. What is your take on this? Can Social Media be measured - as yet?

What we need to understand is that while we do measure the Social Media space we need to be very clear on what the parameters are to be. Naturally the most upfront one is mentioning that if the objective is achieved then all other things would fall in place. Now the objective for Social Media need not always be in terms of quantifiable terms. It could be qualitative and / or quantitative. The measuring process works just like any other profit and loss system however the parameters are very very different. Add to this not only are the parameters different but the scale of these parameters are also different.

One needs to understand 'how Social Media works' before diving into a measuring chase. This is the most critical part. If one does not know, understand and comprehend how Social Media actually works, how it performs and how to go about it then one is not [with due respect] qualified to establish the measuring criteria. As you read below you will get an understanding of  this statement.  

While measuring the Social Media efforts we need to consider the below parameters. The below parameters are indications of the various factors that are to be 'considered' and 'understood' before we start to set a formula:

Time: Time is of great essence here in Social Media. At one level we need to be clear that immediate results are not every time the only correct way for measure. Social Media by its nature works on two levels one is engagement levels with the members and the SEO level. If we go a little deep both engagement and SEO get better with consistent efforts.They require the time factor to get established. For instance the positive engagement which eventually should lead to loyalty and viral effect cannot happen at once by merely setting up of a Facebook Fan Page for instance and getting people to join in. To develop relevant interactions the brand and the customer set would require time. The next part is SEO. SEO work is like an investment. You consistently work on the SEO aspect while working online. The efforts put in today will reap you rewards in the near future.  

Number of followers / fans / members: This is the most sought after target. While it would be great to have a huge Fan base it is necessary that the topics we communicate is relevant to them and enhancing our brand image. It is equally essential to get them dialoguing with us and just not having a one way communication [only from us]. This means that we need to have quality and not just quantity based followers / fans / members. When our communication is engaging only then we can be sure to a large extent to have a desired response. Additionally we should remember that good quality of engagement would lead to a viral effect. Thus automatically leading to increase in membership which is relevant to us and to whom we are relevant and bring value into their lives. This leads us onto 3 aspects namely:
Quantity [number of members]
Quality [right members that are relevant to brand]
Engagement Level [level of interaction and involvement]

For those who would be satisfied with numbers there is still a way out: Hence instead of the typical, usual number game how about using parameters like:
How many customers asked for more information
How many have been retained for over three months as your Tweeter followers
How many come to your main site / main blog
What was the conversion taking place in terms of sales
Number of features that the customers suggested and how many have we managed to implement
Number of hours in a week when we have interacted with the customers and created a result
Number of new qualitative customers
How many qualitative customers are being retained over three months
Number of repeat customers [same customer interacting intensely and participating more]
Number of viral effects that have taken place
Reduction in support costs
Number of new things that we discovered as consumer insight
Increase in Page Rank
Number of redemption taking place [if at all there is redemption coupon made available]
Number of back-links that you receive [qualitative back-links not just quantitative]

Add to this be sure to measure the qualitative aspect in terms of:
Satisfaction
Loyalty [retention and viral effect]
Engagement
Feedback

So it could be the mix of qualitative and quantitative matrix.

Add to all of the above factors is constant improvement. Having set the parameters we need to consistently check with reality of out individual case. Many a times we may set a lot of parameters that will not really make sense to an individual case for measuring. The parameters need to be in-sync with the feasibility of there being an output in terms of the brand, customer set, competition and category. It is not the case of same parameters fit all.

So we need to be very clear on how we want to measure the success of a Social Media Network Campaign.

What are your thoughts? Do join in.