You have to Listen

Using social media for marketing throws up its own challenges. Heres one perspective looking at it from the customer's point of view. The first thing on his or her mind is yeah all thats fine but how do I measure return on investment? How do I know it works? What is the criteria for measuring success? How will I know that this is worth spending money over? The answer depends on what it is that he or she is looking for. Spreading brand awareness? Acquiring new customers? Converting customers? You can answer these questions if you know what social media marketing involves.

It all starts with listening. To your customers and potential customers. In traditional marketing this is called Market Research. You pay agencies to do this or you have an inhouse research department that carries out market research. They would do this either using surveys or using focus groups. Surveys would be aimed at a selected group of people and specific questions would be asked which would give you answers. Focus groups would involve a session with a selected group of people who you could keep asking questions and get answers from. In both these cases, you would get answers. You would not necessarily get insights. This is because you might not have been able to get a target audience that is necessarily representative or maybe you just didnt ask enough right questions. And here is where listening in the social media space makes a difference. Here you are not asking questions and getting answers. Rather you are listening to people talk to each other and in the process stand a much better chance of gaining insights from their conversations and comments than you would from direct question-answer sessions.

The next stage involves talking. This in a traditional context is marketing. Which is again a one-way outbound communication to your target audience using different media. In the social media context it would be more participating in and stimulating two-way conversation that your customers have with each other, and not merely what you have to say to them.

Sales - this would be the stage where you energize your audience and have them sell to each other. This is where once you have built up a loyal following of customers, they would then in turn advocate your product/services and bring in more customers so that your loyal following increases.

The support stage would be where you help these customers support each other. Again here the key is in enabling conversation amongst themselves to allow them to support each other along with help from your side. Finally the development process would also involve key customers who have become advocates of your products/services and include them in the development and design of new products/services.

The key to all of the above is being able to provide the necessary and relevant tools and platforms to your customers based on their social technographic profiles. Your objectives should be clear and based on this your strategies and selection of technologies should follow. Any approach to social media marketing necessarily should involve People, Objectives, Strategies and Technology. And in that order.

What are your views on social media marketing? Do you think it works? Take the poll shown alongside.

It takes Genius....

“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.” - Albert Einstein.

In the wake of the upheaval caused by the near collapse of a leading IT firm, there has been a sudden increase in the concern for Corporate Governance across the Corporates in the country. These companies are now focusing their attention on how they can prevent problems from occurring in their organizations. The 2008 financial crisis has further emphasized the fact that prevention is often a far less bitter pill for an organization to swallow than the cure.

Policies, Procedures, Processes - you can draft these and cast them in stone till you are blue in the face, but an organization that cannot implement them, and having implemented them, monitor them well enough day after day, is still going to end up with egg on their face. What is required is a weapon that will allow the organization to keep things in order - monitor, detect, remediate and then track through to closure any material weaknesses that may inherently be lurking in the system. There are those who place a great deal of faith in their abilities to implement said processes and procedures and use paper and pencil to monitor and track without putting into place any system citing budget crunches to get around investing in a compliance system - but the simple fact remains - you cannot get around it. Prevention is better than cure. Detecting and nipping in the bud any problem lurking in the depths of the organization is better than wrestling with and putting it down once it has reared its ugly head. In short, as the quote says, intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them. And we have today that genius - and its name is technology.

Theres a very good blog post that talks about The Genius of Compliance Technology, which brings out nicely the fact that Compliance and risk management professionals that effectively utilize technology can make the difference between successful and unsuccessful firms.

Social Technographics

Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff analyses the social phenomenon of the forces created by customers connecting which they call the groundswell.

The book classifies people according to how they use social technologies – called Social Technographics. There are 6 types of people who make up the rungs of the Social Technographics ladder.

1. Creators: A Creator is one who will publish a blog, publish their own web pages, upload videos they create, upload audio/music they create, write articles or stories and post them.

2. Critics: These are the ones who respond to content from others. They post ratings/reviews of products/services, comment on someone else’s blog, participate in online forums, contribute to/edit articles in a wiki.

3. Collectors: They organize content for themselves or others using RSS feeds, add tags to web pages or photos, vote for websites online.

4. Joiners: The ones who connect in social networks. They maintain a profile on a social networking site and visit social networking sites.

5. Spectators: They are consumers of social content. They read blogs. They watch videos of other users. They listen to podcasts. They read online forums. They read customer ratings/reviews.

6. Inactives – who are none of the above.

Taken together, these groups make up the ecosystem that forms the groundswell. By examining how they are represented in any subgroup, strategists can determine which sort of strategies make sense to reach their customers.

A milestone!

According to the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service, the Internet surpassed 1 billion visitors in December 2008.

When the number crossed 1 million, no one was counting. It kind of crept up and slid into the pages of history. But this time around they were prepared. The big countdown etc.

China has taken the lead in the number of internet users worldwide. India, being the second most populous country in the world however lags behind but is poised to eventually overtake the US, Japan and Germany

Read the complete article here.

Pigs That Glow In The Dark

Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that "glow in the dark". In a news article Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs, the scientists are reported to have claimed that while other researchers have bred partly fluroscent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through - heart, internal organs and all.

Apart from the revolutionary strides human research will take with this development, there is an incident that immediately springs to my mind which, given that fluroscent pigs existed then, would have turned out quite differently.

There was a report in a local newspaper of a small town up in the hills, which reported that a local drunk had his toes chomped off by a pig in the night while he lay in a roadside ditch in a drunker stupor. Well if said pig had been a fluroscent green, some passer-by would have noticed pig in the act and alerted the authorities. Or drunken man may have been roused from his slumber by all the fluroscence hovering around him while pig feasted on his body parts. Maybe none of the above, but it still doesnt take away from the fact that things will be different if you have "pigs that glow in the dark" running around. No more problems with pigs that vanish into the night, green glowing pigs are always easier to find. No more problems with monster pigs creeping up on you while you sleep to chomp off toes or other body parts. They would attract a lot more attention than the drab non-glowing variety.

Some day many more will go the green way.

And your breakfast on the odd day then could very well be - Green Eggs and Ham !

Those who use Twitter - Are they twits?

These past few days I have been trying my hand at Twitter. For the longest time (not that its been around that long) I had kept away from it, but I do want to know what accounts for its immense popularity and rapid rise in the social space. I had signed up a long time ago and after the initial couple of "tweets" - thats what they are called when you say something on twitter - I had stayed away from it, not for any specific reason, but just because - well, just because. After a few days I have picked some people to follow, found that there are some who have decided to follow me and apart from that I am still trying to sort out the fuzz from the buzz. I guess it takes a little getting used to. I have the TweetDeck set up so I dont need to login everytime and everytime I look theres this whole bunch of new "tweets" that have come in from those that I am following. My dilema right now is - what exactly does one do on Twitter - or, what is expected, acceptable etiquette or behaviour on this wonderful tool? So now that I am on it what exactly should I do - or not do? And the answer came from where else but Twitter .... heres the link to this good helpful article which was 'tweeted' by one of the people that I am following that explains so nicely what the whole thing is all about.

Happy Tweeting!

One Hat Too Many

One of the responses to my attempt at making the grand sweep from wandering generality to meaningful specific was thats all very fine and good luck but what if you end up with something which is generally meaningful but specifically absurd?? Wonderful I say... because the whole point is to try and move away from the general somethings, the wandering generalities that clutter our minds and paths and home in on something which is specific, focussed, measurable, quantifiable, absurd though it may be, but then what the heck - absurd can be good, absurd is innovative, there are entire movements devoted to the absurd, so it really is not that bad. Its like someone said its better to be specifically absurd for a day than be generally meaningful your entire life. OK. Maybe nobody actually said that, but there have been similar statements made - or words to that effect anyway. My point is, like I said before - so having made it, will not get into it again.

Hats. Suddenly theres too many to wear. I know the times they are a-tough and we are tottering on the brink of a cataclysmic downturn (arent we into it already?? i know - i know - the tunnel it is dark and lovely) but does that mean that many hats is the flavour of the season? You know what? It just may be. It is.

This is the one time, painful and tough as it may be, that is going to throw up opportunities for you to innovate in more ways than you thought possible. This is the time when you can, apart from panicking and flailing limbs in all directions hoping to catch something, home in on opportunities that you dig up, or create them if necessary. And to do that you will have to wear hats - many of them. You do not know when you will need to be what to whom. So carry them around. You may need a small truck to cart them around, but do it. Innovation is the name of the game, and only those that do, will still be around when the sun comes pouring in at the end of that tunnel. Innovation. Adaptability. Agility. Dynamically Reconfigurable. You get the picture. You could also check out this blog post that I found interesting.

And once you see it through, you can go back to your fancy suits, cigars, golf and cars. But till then, its the hats that are going to see you through. And if they call you the Mad Hatter... let me tell you, the madder, the better!

From a 'wandering generality' to a 'meaningful specific'

I saw this video of an interview given by Seth Godin where he talked about the power of tribes and why it is important to have a tribe. He says that you dont need to sell to the world. If you can get a tribe of a thousand people that buy into your idea, then each will go out and get in a thousand more. He also talked about being the best at something specific than trying to be one of the crowd while attempting too many things. Pick what is important to you, what is your world, and be the best at it. And theres the killer line where he talks about how if he were to attempt too many things he would be a 'wandering generality' rather than a 'meaningful specific'.

Click Here to watch the video.