Social networking has been around since sometime now. There’s much content around. There’s a lot of sharing, caring, love and what not. What was missing still, as I said it before, was the real understanding of the ‘Human Behavior’ by the social network. I am not referring to the real Artificial Intelligence, that might also happen one day, but social networking has a real face to it. Its more human really than technology.
Interestingly facebook, recently did couple of interesting changes in the UI and especially how they are evolving their brand pages. The entire concept of brand pages is essentially to provide an online space for brands to reach out and engage its target audience OR as I believe, targeting is the second level, first its about attracting just the available audience.
Look below your fan page likes
Recently facebook added something interesting below your fan page likes ‘number’. They added something called the People Talking About! This number essentially represents the number of people who are talking about your brand (mentioning you in comments, liking updates) etc. in a week. As an obviously logical extension to the thought, the more the number of people talking, the more is your brand reaching out to the relevant target audience.
Word of mouth
Now don’t feel as if I am traversing to a whole new topic. Interestingly what I feel is, there is a lot that facebook is doing to model the real world online. I find this very interesting. For me, since I have known social networks, I have always said, a successful social network is the one, which can understand the human behavior well and model it. And facebook is doing just that.
The number of people discussing your brand on facebook, is now visible to you, which is pretty much like the word of mouth which is one of the strongest ways of brand marketing in the real ‘offline’ world.
Social Network and the Human Behavior
I strongly believe, the future of social networking and hence the success of a global super social network really will revolve around the fact as to how well would the network understand the basic human nature and behavior and then model the various products and services around the same.
Make the platform effortless to engage with.
Statistics will always matter to businesses and Insights always help
One of the strongest advances which facebook has made in the last few days are to strengthen their “page” insights. Any brand which can intelligently gather data points and make worthwhile inferences from them, can leverage the free insights to better their understanding of the customer they are engaging with, online.
These are interesting times and such small yet powerful productized services from social networking platforms will surely change the game for everyone around.
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Social Media Marketing – are your kidding me?
Yes Sir, I am asking this question. Being the CEO of a fast emerging Social Media for Enterprise company, I am asking you this question, are you kidding me, when you say, Social Media Marketing?
Social Media – When Did it Become All About Marketing?
Well, its been a little over 3 years and Iv been hearing a buzzzzzzz word (yes the buzz has been longer than I expected it to be) called: Social Media Marketing. I know of so many small and large companies who are making hay while the sun shines by doing something called: Social Media Marketing.
But Marketing – That’s it?
Is it all about just marketing? Is it? I have seen this media grow and its effects and the various ways which companies have leveraged this media in. From plain simple blogging to Viral campaigns, all’s been said and done.
There have been some pretty major campaigns which found their place under the sun and in the hearts of people. There were funny videos of Ghazal Singers Selling Microsoft Software to Online gangs of the fair sex selling beauty products.
Time to Learn!
Social Network: a social network is nothing other than a network group of people who may have multiple objectives to join the same.
When did it Become All about Marketing?
Well, when did Social Networks become all about marketing? Where did the whole aspect of a knowledge economy go? When did real knowledge collaboration take a back seat?
The Dynamics of Marketing and How Online Media has Affected Them?
There are major theories being written and shared all across the world. I agree no less, there’s definitely a fundamental shift which has taken place overtime, since people have started connecting globally with each other. Its really about empowerment. People today feel empowered with the sudden freedom of speech, sudden freedom of connecting globally, sudden expansion of vision and opportunities.
And since these people play various roles in their normal course of life: parents, students, employees, bosses, employers, buyers, sellers etc. hence each one of them see these social networks as a way to connect with like minded people globally, they feel empowered.
Are You Mar-Kidding?
I ask the marketers now, are you Mar-Kidding? Yes!
There is a whole new set of aware, jazzy, savvy customers online, so obviously they have to be tapped into. Lets become a Social Media Marketing company and help our customers connect with their prospects online. Great thought! And no doubts, businesses are investing into this media.
But let me share in my experience of why many businesses do:
- Part of an experimental marketing budget
Businesses are yet to really see the powerful nature of this media. And why do I say that? Because let me go and ask how many of them can really quantify the results and how many of them really had clarity on their business objectives before even stepping into this mode and exploring the New Media as a marketing option!
- My competition is there and they are somehow successful, I want to be as well
Let me put it straight and I actually put it the same way for my customers as well. If DELL made couple of million dollars in revenue by executing a solid strategic thought on the Social Media, leveraging channels like twitter and the concept of community building, well, yes it did. But that ends right there. There is no point creating a parallel.
If I am not online, I am lagging behind as a business. If nothing else, at least I would get more interesting insights about my business online.
I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ALL THIS
My problem is: many businesses, and when I say businesses, I come from experience across the board from Small and Medium enterprises to Large Enterprises, which operate globally. Many of these businesses are really not fully decided upon what their business objectives are for leveraging the Social Media.
And before I go ahead, my disclaimer is, just like in every domain there are good and bad both, hence I am not generalizing every company, but many run of the mill Social Media Marketing companies (who have normal Bcom pass graduates who may have never read what a brand really is, taking about branding) as their resources to save cost and increase margins, go to these businesses and tell them its about Marketing boss.
Your customers are here! They are already talking, you are missing the bus!
And even before the customer can actually sit and deliberate, he says, what the heck, let me just start with a small amount and rope this company as my vendor and test waters.
THIS IS RUINING THE MARKET
Today, I personally know of business owners (who are good friends), who invested quite some money into the Social Media and after 6 months said: okay I am here there everywhere, but I dont really get how my business got affected?
When you have inexperienced lots working with enterprises, you are actually delivering a cake which is half baked and which will eventually burn out. Its as simple as a Chinese Specialist trying an Italian Cuisine while writing on his LinkedIn profile, I am an Expert in Global Cuisines.
Why Are Majorly All Social Media Marketing Companies Saying: The Indian Customer is Not Able to Appreciate our Services
Well, this one is a common sentence and though many people may shy away from saying this in public, but Iv heard it from the horses’ mouth, owners of Social Media Agencies saying: Indian Customers are not paying us as much, they don’t appreciate these services as much.
I agree to Disagree.
Show the customer value and he will pay
– this has been my thought process since the very beginning and even today as I am running an emerging company, I know how far have we come and how fast have we actually evolved, all thanks to some fantastic mentors we have on board who come with a global perspective and insight.
A Practical Example
Since I like taking examples to effectively communicate with people, let me put across the story of Until ROI in few lines. We started as a run of the mill Social Media Marketing company but soon realized that being just another one would be NON-SENSICAL.
There is no point being a fish between sharks already there and more fishes mushrooming at every nook and corner.
That is when we decided to take help of mentors who come on board with over 100 + years of cumulative global experience. And well, we changed and changed for the good.
But what did we do?
- Invested in people – we have a small but smart team of people who have relevant experience and sure we pay not just at par, in some cases, better than companies at least 20 times our size
- INNOVATE – INNOVATE – INNOVATE – we came up with a whole new thought process for leveraging the New Media for businesses
- Value Driven Solutions – our existing clients who needed more as they kept getting more insights into their businesses, we have been flexible enough to learn from their requirements and wallah, we have come up with some fantastic process based solutions
What’s been the result?
As a simple answer, we are a: Social Media for Enterprise company today 
with happy enterprise clients.
Final Word!
I would like all Social Media Marketers to actually help businesses help create strong processes, both Internal and External and help them bridge the gap with not only their customers externally (who pay) but also the customers internally (employees, management).
We must help businesses understand the dynamics of being Social and how and why must a business actually go towards going public and not let it become a small paying experiment.
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