I discuss Social Media with some of the established brains in the domain in India and have had discussions with Social Media thinkers sitting thousands of miles across the seven seas.
And now I do have a problem!
Before I put my problem down, let me put some questions for you to ponder upon:
Almost every business today needs to reach out and the Internet becomes one of the best mediums. But does every business have the same objective in terms of (Branding, Outreach, Lead generation) etc.?
Is it necessary that a solution which has worked for an IT company (as an example) would fit great for a BPO?
Is it necessary that YOU as an Online marketing company would be able to understand everything from a product business to an IT to a BPO to a Chocolate product company?
Is marketing universal and do the same rules apply for all on Social Media?
Well, now let me put forth my problem!
One of the biggest lacking points that I see with online marketing/ social media companies today is lack of good human resources. In my experience, you need three core and basic qualities to be even thinking of creating social media strategies for a business (client). These are:
Solid understanding of Business/ Products/ Services/ Industry
Solid understanding of the consumer who consume these products/ services online
Solid understanding of marketing
My experience of the industry says that majority of Social Media companies, talk about all the major tools and all the great jargons, but what they dont understand is how to customize a solution for the client. Each business (may be from the similar domain) will have a different set of problem statements to answer. Each business will have different objectives to achieve.
When so much is different, how can you just go along with jargons and pitch the same solution to each client?
I have interacted with many a Social Media people who if spoken to, would not have the required level of knowledge/ understanding of the product/ industry/ consumer behavior they are pitching to, but will keep circling around their choice of words which are: branding, positioning and lead generation (amongst the many others)
To scale up as a Social Media company – My way would be
The human resources that I recruit would surely have these three above mentioned qualities. Also, since time is an essential factor in the Internet business, I as a small company cannot afford to keep training my employees and wait for them to grasp business and start delivering. Hence what I need to focus on is getting the right people on board who take the ownership of work and understand the criticality of client delivery and execution.
Since this time, I have connected with many people, from some of the best in the Internet domain to some real sharp entrepreneurs, who have given their comments on the various business models which startups and the established Internet/ Online companies are following.
Scale up or Shut Shop
Out of my interaction a couple of days back with a highly placed and successful Internet entrepreneur, a revelation jumped out, which in a way took me by surprise, as I was always present to it, but not really in the real sense of the action.
Over a cup of coffee, we discussed the following:
Is working with SME’s in India really that easy into Social Media?
Are they good paying customers?
Are they easy to grab?
Do they really have the time and resources?
How, many huge clients (some of the top companies in India and Abroad) are looking for all kinds of services into Social Media and are ready to pay for innovative and rewarding work
Now, I had this idea about how social media campaigns are made for these big fat clients, but never had someone who is doing it in real time, telling me, how much of it is true!
Thus came the BIG realization!
There are these big companies who are asking for partners in the online world, who could do some really innovative stuff. When I talk of innovation and results, I am in a way referring to the likes of Sunsilk Gang of Girls and TATA TEA Jaago Re.
But what I was not aware of was, trivial and almost commoditized offerings in Social Media as creation and seeding of content on the various Social Media channels, these BIG companies are asking for such services as well as an integral part of the offering and are paying good sums for the same.
Many small online marketing companies are offering the same set of services to their clients which represent the SME/ Startup space.
But would the business model sustain?
I am not saying NO, but surely I think its going to be very very difficult. Even if as an online marketing company your differentiation is the market that you are serving, you still have to consider that your market should be sustainable enough and you should have enough resources to crack the market. Some questions that you should answer:
How long is your sales cycle?
Do you have enough resources to hang onto your tables?
Is a low paying and yet more demanding market, the best way for you as a startup?
Moral of the story?
Am I saying that small online marketing companies would not sustain? Well, not really! But surely such companies would find it really hard to sustain. The model over a longer run is surely not sustainable. Moving up the chain and crossing over to the clientle, which is sustainable for your business, is an absolute essential.
Price war?
Not really, in my personal opinion, price is surely not a differentiating factor which smaller companies can establish and fight over. Otherwise the shark will surely eat away the smaller fish.
Finally
There is enough business around, all you need to do is create the right set of expectations with the client and deliver innovations which would help the client get a high over, through short term wins, and will also help you establish long term relationships with your high net worth client!
Paritosh Sharma speaks on Social Media and Mobile 2.0 at OMCAR 2009
I take pride in presenting my talk at OMCAR 2009, a hugely successful event which was held by OM Careers in association with TiE, Delhi at Amity University, Noida.
I am humbled by the response received by the delegates and some amazing insights from the fellow speakers.
Almost 2 weeks back, I entered into this contest which was Organized by the Sol Solutions, Canada called The Great Blog-Off!
40 thought leaders/authors/thinkers from across the globe participated in the first stage, out of which there were top 15 chosen after stage 1, which I was a part of Post stage I, it was 12 people contributing to the Community Marketing Blog passsionately to create one of the best Social Media communities, lead by some of the TOP thought leaders into the field.
And, after these two full of action weeks, I am glad to share, that I have achieved the best Views to Comments ratio on the blogs I contributed to the Community Marketing Blog as part of this contest.
I hereby thank all my followers who helped me achieve this amazing win and also would like to know what all in future you guys would like to read about/know and if you would like to contribute to this blog!! I’d be happy to create your profiles and be glad in creating a platform for emerging people to express their views and thoughts!!
Sharing my talk which I delivered at OMCAR 2009 – The Online Marketing Summit, New Delhi. I am glad to get the feedback that the talk was well received and thanks to all the people who shared their feedback!
This session was blogged LIVE by: Deepanwita Chatterjee, from team OMShare.
Post tea, peppered with some avid networking, we gather for the next session, ‘Making SEO, PPC, SMM & Mobile Work Together’, presented by Mahesh Murthy, CEO Pinstorm and Paritosh Sharma, (SMM Evangelist, OMLogic). I am LIVE Blogging the session and I can’t help notice the excitement that has been generated in the room at the announcement of the session
Paritosh starts the session by explaining that he will be discussing his views about SMM and how business can benefit from SMM.
He starts by displaying a slide with a picture of a colorful grocery store with blue and red boxes.
I specially like the story telling method by which he makes his point. He says that once he went to buy a product of his favorite brand and that brand was not available so he had to settle down for his second favorite brand. So inspite of being a brand loyalist he had to settle with his second choice.
SMM can be explained in two words – message and media.
Paritosh makes the session very lively by citing an example of advertising for a bicycle manufacturer. He quotes 3 example campaigns
A description of the specifics of the bicycle
A picture of the bicycle
A video of a woman riding a cycle showing how easy to ride
No need to mention the third method clicked. What really worked is the content, the message, and the media.
He cites another example of the inventor of sliced bread. The person patented it, advertised it still it didn’t catch up for 15 years. Another bread manufacturer came along and packaged the sliced bread in the right manner and it appealed to the user.
He rightly makes a point that there is no single rule for marketing. Advertising on SlideShare may work for a business and YouTube for another. It is important to understand the needs of the client and the client’s client.
He is explaining that the way to go about it is to create a message and target it to the right set of consumers.
He goes on to cite another example which triggers a lot of laughter – TataSky did an adult site, the moment anybody clicks on the site the questions like age and gender comes up which create the impression of the contents within. But the moment you click it it says ‘dude a paap hai’. The campaign sure has been done in a very witty manner which creates a huge recall value.
He also cites the example of jaagore.com and the ‘pappu pass ho gaya’ campaigns about which we all are well aware of. Both the campaigns and the were huge successes and the radio campaign ‘dot is hot’ was a runaway success as well. Jagore.com was a purely online site, and the message ‘chai peke jaago’ was very intelligently done. Kudos to the tata guys!
Television is a passe. There was a time people bought advertising space. But now people are spending more time on the internet on Orkuts and FaceBooks.
The audience silently agrees to that.
Paritosh says that SMM is more about customizing, customizing according to the needs of the customers.
He goes on to elaborate the four steps of creating a campaign.
The first step is to listen and learn. Even the customer is not clear about what he wants from SMM.
The second step is to audit and analyze the customer’s business model, whether SMM will be good or PPC.
The third step is to develop and test.
The fourth step is to execute and monitor. Metrics are difficult in SMM. But it is not that difficult if you understand the business perspective of the client. And till the time there is no metrics, one can always customize metrics for the clients.
He adds
Position your brand right. Do it with the right medium and to the relevant section of the audience online. And that’s where the PPC and SEO’s come into action.
He is now telling us about Skittles where every page is a social media, on one page there is twitter, on another YouTube and FaceBook on yet another. There is nothing good or bad it is about.
He then shares about Webchutney.com. On the home page, there are two tabs saying ‘I have 5 mins’ , and ‘I have plenty of time’, clicking on either takes the user to separate pages. He cites an example that if one sees a YouTube video of a bicycle gear that she likes and on clicking on it she is taken to the home page of the bicycle website, then one wouldn’t be too happy about it. The concept of separate landing works. I can’t help thinking that yes, that has happened to me many times!
He makes a point by reiterating that markets have evolved overtime and its time that one starts marketing to the innovators and early adopters. They are the ones which will take to your product and will do a much better viral campaign on the internet rather than the late adopters.
You have a great product…. You have identified the target market…
and people are talking about u….. and before the fizz goes out, market it…
Paritosh wraps up the session saying
The riskiest thing that you can do for your brand is to be safe.
Even if anybody writes anything bad about your brand, one can be alerted by a google alert and can pacify them.
Thanks for the useful insights Paritosh, it was great listening to you.
One of the most interesting sessions I have blogged. Thanks Paritosh
Today a large number of people across the world are using internet as a means of communication, entertainment, shopping, gaming and searching information. When used in an effective manner the internet has a huge potential for marketing services, products and brand building.
In the current scenario indulging in online marketing is no longer a choice but a necessity.
Do you want to learn how the power of the web can be used for marketing your brand? Do you want to be a part of the booming Online Marketing industry? Do you want to interact and share experiences with the experts of the online domain? All this and more at India’s only conference dedicated completely to Online Marketing, which is brought to you by OMCareers in association with TiE, New Delhi.
After the astounding success of OMCAR 2008, which revolved around empowering Online Marketing professionals in their careers, the online marketing brains have come together for yet another conference on Online Marketing this year. OMCAR 2009, Online Marketing Summit focuses upon empowering businesses to grow by leveraging the power of Online Marketing.
OMCAR 2009 promises to provide endless opportunities of interacting with the professionals from the Online Marketing space. The one day event will have sessions on the various aspects of Online Marketing
Online Marketing – Reaching Your Customers Cost Effectively
The intersection of SEO, PPC and SMM
Case Studies – Best Practices in Online Marketing
Web Usability & Analytics
Unconference/Site Clinic
There will be endless possibilities of networking, sharing of views and learning from the experts from the online space. The event will be an exiting and enriching experience for anybody who is interested or associated with the online media. It is undoubtedly going to be a great place for CMOs, Online Marketing Professionals, Web developers, Entrepreneurs and CXOs Small and Medium Enterprises to learn about, discuss and imbibe the latest Online Marketing Techniques and Strategies.
The one day event will be held on 23rd May at Amity Business School Noida.
Previous successes
OMCAR 2008 was designed to create a confluence for the Online Marketing Industry and the professional talent who dream to be a part of it. OMCAR 2008 was a huge success with over 300 attendees.
Nikhil Sarup from Solutions Digitas – shares on Web 2.0 means business, and he shares a concrete iron clad framework for implementing web 2.0 in your company, as Nikhil puts it for the audience.
I particulary like Nikhil’s initiation to the session. Its interesting to see a real guy out of the crowd! Sharing his point of view on how social trends are happening in B2b space! Generally when I have interacted with people, the implementation of Social Media in the B2b space has always been a greater concern as compared to the B2c space.
Nikhil has come as a breath of fresh air for the audience here. After listening to some very interesting thoughts by Kiruba and others on Social Media’s impact and how can we classify consumers and look at their behavior, having Nikhil open the session with some very thought provoking 1.5 joke(s) makes an impact which I can sense and see in the audience. The ease with which Nikhil puts across his point and clarifies the clutter around Social Media for a business is worth your and your businesses’ while
Showing the audience the need for being there where your consumers are, Nikhil not only is forcing out of people the urge to know, how they can best leverage Social Media for their business and how can they really create a successful strategy around it, but he is also sharing some real practical insights, which can be modeled and shaped to suit your business requirements and create a successful Social Media presence.
Since much emphasis has already been given to the traditional methods of Social Media and how and why’s of its importance to business, giving a practical outlook to the entire game makes the entire talk a much intriguing affair. Now we have Nikhil giving a practical display of a dummy site and how his company makes Social Media, accessible to their cleints on their web sites, and hence the clients’ client does not have to really go anywhere else on the internet to talk his heart out.
The first engagement touchpoint happens on the web site itself
I am personally much interested to know, how Nikhil and his team decide upon the information flow and how dealing with different business verticals, they decide upon the site design? Is there a standard template, which proves that the visitor to your site would interact in this manner, if the content is made accessible right at the web site?
Proving his point to the audience, who is listening with much interest, Nikhil’s demonstration of the site is surely giving many a ideas to the audience present. I am sure we are going to see some really interactive sites coming up in the near future! Talking about Web 2.0, I am quite amazed with the way Nikhil has made content accessible to the client where he lands up on your web site. With all what I want present to me in different sorts of content, white papers, Videos etc, I would surely be able to hold onto my visitor onto the right section of my web site, for a good time, hence the probability of conversion increases!
I personally am very much on the similar page as Nikhil, and surely appraise of the ideas that he has shared, in the manner that he has! Way to go Nikhil!
The session is now wrapped up, within time and we are open to QandA offline.
The DLF Indian Premier League, one of the biggest cricket extravaganza in the recent times, has started today!
Mumbai Indians has won the first match of the DLF IPL!! Though I dont have any team as my favorite in particular and am not really tracking the event for the teams and the matches, but there are many other reasons which I am tracking the event for!
The design of the event, the execution and specifically the activity happening on the internet with respect to the event. While driving to work each morning, I hear Coca Cola’s ads on the radio and the disclaimer at the end says www.dillidilse.com and today finally I got the time to catch up with the web site.
Including interactivity and creating an advertising cum promotional campaign with an objective for making the message viral is an one of the best possible ways today to engage your target audience. With Social Media changing the rules of the game, such a campaign was on the cards!
But showing a bottle of Cola getting filled surrounded with cricket – Hmmm, I have my doubts!
The color and the design interface looks good, interactivity has been taken care of, to the extent that you can move the cards on the home page as you feel like. The entire concept sounds good, but I still am negative on this going viral and far from establishing Coke as the official drink for the DLF IPL (though this may not even be Coke’s vision) this is purely my thought on the platform and business objectives and value related to it.
I remember reading a case study while the Beijing Olympics were on, when people were not sure whether Pepsi or Coke was the official drink of the games!
A simple intuitive Strong Call to Action interface would have been better!
The campaign is engaging to the point that I would like to know the Delhi team, but am I really interested in knowing if a player is a Libran and what his interests are?! Would I share this information along? NO!! Virality is a far off dream, though it may work for Coke, as it would spend big marketing dollars in employing big online marketing agencies.
I remember a couple of previous viral campaigns which I blogged about previously, with simple, 2 static flash based web pages, but a high Call To Action! They clearly never gave you an interruptive message at your face to go and buy the product, but were high on Brand Establishment and brand recall!
The message being delivered by Coke can be much enhanced and the whole campaign be leveraged towards a higher engagement value with the end consumer, carefully working on the market segmentation, and understanding the message that the consumer is looking out for.
Looking forward to some exciting action at the DLF IPL!!
Yes the title of the post is correct and well, I am writing one after a long time. There has been lot of action lately in the social media domain. While working towards refining Social Media metrics and measurability and making things more transparent and understandable for the client, I have been working towards synergizing Social Media with the business objectives for my clients and the journey has been fairly fruitful.
Have stumbled upon a few tools which I found fairly interesting. In this post I am sharing with you a search engine which I digged, DuckDuckGo !! Yes, that’s the name of the search engine, and No, I havent lost my senses!
Strange name, but effective results. Far from the advertisement laden Google results, DDG comes fresh with a new interface and search results which are in contexts better than Google search results. The way DDG classifies search results and shows you the official site for yoru search result (if there is any existing) and then shows the rest of the results is amazing!
Who created DDG?
DDG is the brainchild of MIT grad Gabriel Weinberg, who is self funding the initiative!
I support Weinberg when he promises “less garbage” results. While I am writing this post, I have explored DDG for almost a couple of hours now and I do appreciate the design!
Design – what has it got to do with a search engine?
When you have just a text box on the landing page, what do you need to do with the design of the page? I found it highly intuitive and intelligent of DDG to be giving the user the option of clicking on the many options of internet web sites available on the right sidebar of the screen of your search results.
So, lets say, if I search my name: paritosh+sharma
The first result that comes is my official site:www.paritoshsharma.com followed by the other search results. Now I was fairly amused by the deep search results that I got while doing a name search.
Okay, so I got the search result, now what if I need to see the presence of the searched item on Social Media?
DDG has very intelligently placed links on the right sidebar of the page, which link to various social media channels and other popular sites and an automatic search query goes to the channel which gives the searcher access to your social media profile on the channels directly.
Thus with a single click on the YouTube icon, I reached to my channel on YouTube
Though not a Google yet, but DuckDuckGo is soon predictably going to prove to be a toughie in the search space, creating its own apprecaitive user base.
Indian politics is suddenly going the online route, there are parties who have launched their web sites, and well, for once if you are on the internet, you would not have missed the Google Ads which splash all over the internet, saying Advani as PM!
First things First
I really am not a keen follower on politics and what happens around, but NOW its that time of the year, when I VOTE, when I EXCERCISE my POWER given to me by the constitution of India and choose the future which Leads India.
I saw LK Advani sharing his views on the Varun Gandhi hate speech issue
And well, I decided, for sure, this is not the man I would like my country to be led by! A man who cannot stand up and take responsibility is not whom I WILL VOTE for! Just playing around with words without coming on a final conclusive stand is not something that you would be able to attract the youth of India with.
You get VOTES in south India, depending upon how Good the saree that you distributed to the Ladies is and same goes for the menfolk with their dhotis
I was travelling to deliver a lecture at one of the most premier institutions of learning in India a couple of days back, and I was lucky enough to share the space for 4.5 hours with a gentleman from a reputed IT Giant in India. Being from Bangalore, he commented
“In South India, people vote, on tha basis of the quality of the Sarees distributed to the women, and the quality of the dhotis to the men, and well, to top it all, depends upon how good the chicken biryani was”
I was amazed at this comment. The most learned class votes for FREE sarees and Dhotis and some food? Talk about Indian politics!
Will I VOTE?
YES! I always have! And I feel its time for all to be aware and decisive and the decision should be based upon, NOT the sarees and the food or the money, but a decision on awareness, on the fact that whatever you leave now, your shildren will be getting it later!
Social Media and the Changing Political Scene
The world of Social Media has changed the landscape. Its a complete shift from people just voting because there families have been supporters of ‘A’ political party, to taking an informed decision! Initiatives like Jaagore.com and Lead India (The Campaign by the Times Of India, Times Group) have refreshed the concept and put in people the quest to know and GO OUT AND VOTE and VOTE the RIGHTEOUS LEADER of the FIRST LOVE – INDIA!
"We thought we understood social media marketing and seo optimization fairly ok but after our one on one session realized many of the fundamental mistakes we were making plus learnt many new tools. Overall an investment I would recommend every entreprenuer to make"
- Nidhi, Founder CEO, Pinnacle Works
Post stage I, it was 12 people contributing to the Community Marketing Blog passsionately to create one of the best Social Media communities, lead by some of the TOP thought leaders into the field.
Yes the title of the post is correct and well, I am writing one after a long time. There has been lot of action lately in the social media domain. While working towards refining Social Media metrics and measurability and making things more transparent and understandable for the client, I have been working towards synergizing Social Media with the business objectives for my clients and the journey has been fairly fruitful.
Indian politics is suddenly going the online route, there are parties who have launched their web sites, and well, for once if you are on the internet, you would not have missed the Google Ads which splash all over the internet, saying Advani as PM!