Why it is time to get your business a Social Website.

Viral Thaker
Founder CEO | TheSocialPeople

With all the roll-drums and bugles around Social Media and Social Marketing most of the businesses have completely forgotten their most powerful and greatest tool of marketing – Websites. No matter how immensely powerful your marketing campaign is, your target audience would still go to check out your website.

This might be one of the most logical and simplest thought but I happened to get this realization during one of my client meetings where they were very keen on a unique social media strategy to increase their online presence and generate business inquiries whereas their existing website was outdated and not up to the standards of the Web2.0 world.

Yes! I write and prophesize a lot about social media and its immense scope of building your business’ brand experience and outreach but I keep emphasizing to all the people I come across that Social Media Marketing is not a separate independent initiative but goes hand in hand with your traditional marketing initiatives.

In a quick research it came to my notice that even today over 90% of the people who want to know about your business offerings visit your website to validate your products/services. The rest 10% check your social media channels to get reviews, consumer opinions and peer feedback. This undoubtedly makes your website a most powerful marketing arsenal that your business has.

Now just imagine what if you give the best of both the worlds i.e., a website that is equivalent to a social networking site. At TheSocialPeople we’re currently redesigning a beta version of our new website after a span of one year and I confess that we had to really think hard before we finalized a route. This was because we had to ensure all the below three rules of social networking:

1. The website should not be over loaded with content
2. Design a U.I and U.E that enable visitors an easy & logical navigation
3. Content creation that will enable people to populate their friends and friends-of-friends.

Once we were able to finalize route based on the above 3 thumb rules we once again had to sit and brainstorm on the rudiments of a social website. After a lot of discussions and arguments we were finally able to have a consensus on the below 6 core elements that needs to considered to create synergy and relationship between your website and social sites.

After reading this if you are considering your website makeover, below are some the check point you can consider:

1. Keep it as plain as vanilla.
2. Social Integration that enable your visitors not only to connect with you via your social sites but also to share your content to their network of friends and friends-of-friends.
3. Providing a back link for all possible content to another page or channel. I’m sure it goes without saying that content is the king but context is the emperor. Back-links would give your content that needed context.
4. Ensure you have more of visual content than textual. Visual content penetrate the sub-conscious mind of consumer as compared to textual that tends to be overseen.
5. Mobile phone compatibility and optimization. 38% of your website visitors on an average use a mobile device, specially the crowd that is enroute social media.
6. Personalized Marketing Automation to smartly automate your marketing maneuvers in a controlled manner to ensure a maximum outreach and engagement.

What in your opinion are the other check points to ensure your websites are socially engaging? Share your opinions below.

Social Media loves Small & Medium Business

As a Founder CEO of a B2B specialist firm on Social Media Strategy and Analytics it did not take me a lot of time to realize that it was not only the investors in facebook’s IPO who were thwarted with the Social Network but also a lot of small and medium businesses who claim to have burnt their hands by spending too much time and money on Facebook for negligible returns.




Now every time I’ve met a small business owner and had this scenario I ask them 3 basic questions:

1. Who was running your Social Media campaign and how skilled they were with Social Network sites?
2. What was the strategy they had adopted to achieve their business objective? Or did they actually put any strategy in place first of all?
3. What was their metrics on ROI?

On detailed investigation it was a learning that most of these businesses’ campaign did not even qualify for social media campaign criteria.

What do most of the businesses get wrong in Social Media Marketing?

It’s a sad state that most of the businesses today are more sales oriented rather than to be Marketing centric. Even the marketers today talk the language of reaping immediate yield, rather than to wait for the time to harvest. Instead of building an ecosystem and a network of customers, prospect customers, employees and stake holders on social media they want immediate lead generation and results.
While Attract, Engage, Convert are the 3 milestones of Social Media Campaigning (let’s call it Interactive Campaigning); Patience is the key to its success!

So what is recommended to the entrepreneurs who want to go social?

It’s simple, go back to the basics and start building the blocks – Who your target audience is? What are they looking for? Does your business have a service/solution they require? If your answers are a definite yes to such questions then start thinking of ways to engage them. I’d like to strongly emphasize here that one does not require insanely large numbers. It’s not about quantity but quality. Remember that Content is the King, but Context is the Emperor.

Also the success of a small business very much depends on creating a personal connection with each customer. Do not mix it with a Facebook paid Ad campaign; you might just end up blowing your marketing budget on a “Friends of Friends” advertising where a message seems to come from a friend but is actually an Ad. People hate this – think about it.

What other tips for Small & Medium Businesses who want to maximize their impact on Social Media?

1. I always like to refer Social Media Marketing as Interactive Marketing. Unlike traditional marketing social media has a two way conversation.
2. Having a million followers / fans does not mean your business would increase exponentially. What really matters is to have that one great follower/fan that can make your brand go viral with a strong “friends of friends” engagement as a brand ambassador.
3. Don’t advertise – Offer information instead. Build a social credibility.
4. Remember the old saying – “Rome was not built in a day”; same stands for your Social Media Ecosystem. If you just keep at it, in the long run you’ll find it will pay off in huge returns and cost savings.

Viral Thaker, Founder & Director | TheSocialPeople
A seasoned HR & Marketing professional, Viral was one of the early adopters of social media. With over a decade of industry experience under his belt, his skills span corporate strategy, delivery management, customer relationship management, business development and operations management. Viral is a voracious reader, a travel enthusiast and enjoys adventure sports. Follow Viral on Twitter @vrlthaker

Are Indian Businesses Ready for Social Media?

Consider this: India ranks among the top twenty users of Facebook in the world. Among the seven major metros in the country, Delhi leads the pack with approximately 39 to 40 percent Facebook users, followed by Mumbai with around 25 percent. About 66 percent of these users fall under the age group of 19 to 40 years. Typically this is the age group that influences purchasing decisions.  Social media reaches out to nearly 60% online Indians.  So are Indian businesses ready for social media?

With numbers like these, they sure ought to be. 

Most businesses in India are still too unsure or shy of testing the social media waters. Unless of course they are youth oriented brands like Fastrack, for instance. A major reason could be the building of a new team to handle the online activity. In most large corporations, where people have pre-defined roles to the T and several channels for decision making, setting up a separate wing for social media management requires additional cost and can take quite a while.

Having said that, there are those who have successfully entered and made the most of the social media arena- Maruti Suzuki took to various online forums and networking sites announcing the launch of Ritz while Tata Nano interacts with several users on Orkut and Facebook. Grant Thornton’s International Business Report notes that 64 percent businesses in India use social media in some capacity- usually for advertising or for the purposes of consumer interaction. As an emerging market, it is perhaps easier for the country to adopt a new marketing phenomenon as compared to developed economies which seem to have already exhausted many such avenues. Indian businesses are most certainly geared to make the most of social media. To what extent, is a wait and watch scenario.

Why it’s time to shift your B2B marketing from “traditional transactions” to “Social engagement”?

In my decade long career one thing that I’ve learnt about business and moreover marketing is that they are more or less synonymous to being social. This engagement has been taken to a much stronger levels with the acceptance of Web2.0 and Social Media as the most powerful and efficient communication channel today. My fellow marketers have completely ensured that their brand is visible on every possible social network available today. What possibly worries me is that a majority of them still have the primary use of Social Media as just another channel to push messages to their so called “target market”.

I think that there is a huge gap amongst brands in terms of using the available social media tools and having an effective strategy to monetize their efforts. This was proved by a quick survey where majority of the CMO agreed that they are struggling in context to the below 3 challenges in addressing their social media marketing woes:

1. Lack of skilled resources
2. Lack of defining a proper ROI on their Social Media Marketing efforts
3. Lack of an effective engagement methodology to enable positive sentiment

One marketer I interacted with recently believes that Social Media is only useful for B2C marketing and the gimmicks that B2C marketers use would never work for B2B. In fact this made this person assume that Social Media is not ment for B2B marketing. To some extent I must confess that the first half of the statement is true but would strongly disagree to the latter half of the statement as B2B and B2C marketing is both about people-to-people communications and eliciting emotional responses, which social media is perfect for doing. At the same time I must emphasize the fact that I’m not advocating the “One-Size-fits-all” mindset; every organization is unique in its own ways and has its own dynamics at work. This is where an effective strategy fueled by the right data plays a vital role in monetizing your business goals the social way!

Yet another interesting incidence that I’d like to share was when I was giving a presentation to a marketing team a few days ago and one of the senior member representing the company said that their buyers are too old, too senior and too busy to be on Facebook or any Social Network for that matter, but we were able to show him that their demographic of buyers do use or want to use social media if they are learning about business solutions the company sells. A recent whitepaper by Forrester on B2B initiatives shows that business decision makers use social media for business purposes, and when it comes to creating content and sharing opinions; they do it more for business than personal reasons.

Social Media can be harnessed for generating demand, but you have to recognize how it is different from other marketing channels. One highly distinguishing advantage Social Media has is that it has a two way dialog between the buyers and sellers unlike the other marketing channels which are monolog in nature and have a longer ROI as investment is heavy.

To summarize on how B2B marketing goals can be achieved via social media – Social Media is all about relationships and sentiments, it requires one to engage in two way interaction and engage regularly; it is realtime and so one needs to be monitoring the sentiments and conversation to consequently take necessary action and tactical strategy; it enables to amplify traffic and ROI to other channels – this according to me is the icing on cake advantage of Social Media as a Marketing and Communicating channel.

B2B marketers that take a more systematic approach have a huge opportunity to cast a wider net than ever, and use the fact that people are connected to the things and people they care about to reach people, draw them in, and build brand preference early in the buying cycle. But to do it, one has to be more systematic and strategic.

How Virtual Classrooms Impact Education

Learning has taken on an altogether new meaning and approach with virtual classrooms or, as I often call it, distance education in real-time avatar. Skype, Youtube, Schooltube and a plethora of other learning tools today is helping classrooms move towards creating a global education community.

How?

Consider this- a school in the United States that is learning about say, Mahatma Gandhi, logs onto Skype in the Classroom and connects to a class in Mumbai that is studying about the freedom struggle. Not only are they exposed to information that is perhaps more authentic, both the students and the teacher can pose their questions to their learning partners here in India and receive immediate response.

You can also connect through sites such as Classle.net to share and engage students in group activities just as on Facebook or Twitter, providing a safe virtual environment for children to learn.

Virtual classrooms such as this can help create a web of educational interconnectedness that can only make the students smarter.

Why?

Because students participating in a virtual classroom not only increase observational power and acute understanding of things, they are motivated to actively seek out information online then hunting through a big fat encyclopedia. It makes learning fun. Period.

A virtual classroom doesn’t take away from the effectiveness of the physical classroom. If anything, it only makes it more fun and adds to the lecture. Play a pre-recorded video of the day’s session. Pause the video if a student has a question and get back to session without losing enthusiasm or your train of thought. You can then use the rest of the class time for activity, worksheets or exercises relating to the subject.

I wish…

That schools here in India upgrade their systems to include virtual education. We don’t have the concept of a field trip in this country. It’s too much money spent and too much responsibility for the teacher. Which is why virtual field trips can do really well here. Imagine the entire fifth grade of a school in Pune visiting the Niagara Falls without budging from their seats. It certainly would make subjects like Geography a little more engaging, don’t you think?

                                                                     

Why Your Employees Should be Social Media Savvy

Are your employees active social media users? About 15 years ago, when computerization boomed its way into corporate houses in India, executives were put through training so that they could discover the life altering ways of Microsoft Office, Lotus and Google. I think it’s time to put employees through training programs to tap the business effective and ethical use of social media at the workplace.

How often have you come across angry rants by employees against their bosses, or casual sharing of classified information on networking sites? These are precisely the sort of things you need to caution your employees against rather than punishing them by swearing off social media completely. I find that a tad regressive in an age when social media features so prominently in our day-to-day affairs. Recent findings have shown that Microsoft and Google have some of the most social employees. Doesn't seem to have come in the way of them being corporate giants now, has it?

• Set up a company network to encourage knowledge sharing. Your workplace after all is a community too. And social media has more to it than sharing photos and ‘what-I-just-ate’ updates. Exchange of relevant information on networking sites helps make your office smarter, increases communication and cohesiveness and, creates a healthy work atmosphere. Workers may find it a better way to send memos and notices through Facebook or Twitter. And appreciating an employee on a social networking site can be a great way to boost morale too.
• It is innate human nature to socialize with colleagues and peers in an organization. Friending or following an employee online doesn't get in the way of productivity. Rather, studies have found that workers who take short breaks on the internet are more productive than those who don’t. Let your employees be your brand ambassadors by posting regular news and updates online. Market surveys too are quicker through online polls; and sharing comments helps to know what your consumers are really looking for.

Social media can positively impact your workplace, if you know how to work it to your advantage. Train your employees to use it better and your business is sure to benefit from it too. 

Introducing TheSocialPeople's Facebook Time

Facebook rolled out Timeline for brand Pages and coming March it would be opened to all. TheSocialPeople welcomes this new change & is proud to update ours.

Since the time when Facebook launched its timeline version for personal profiles we’ve closely chronicled reactions to the switch. While there are many people out there who are disappointed with Facebook’s new avatar, the change to Timeline has been eye-opening and emotional for others.

We must admit our experience lines up with the latter.

Upon adopting the timeline version Timeline, we rediscovered the fact on how much loved TheSocialPeople has been amongst our fans and their 2^nd degree network. We also realized another fact that our Brand Page is just 3 months old but still has over 60 and growing well wishers on a daily basis; this is truly overwhelming and an emotional realization for us. We learnt that our fan page has done everything from being our biggest brand ambassadors to being an outside advocate to help be become better and better every day by touching lives and businesses. With adopting the new timeline we’re excited to form our digital scrapbook in real time — right along with you.

Without you, TheSocialPeople wouldn’t be what it is today.

In the coming weeks, we’ll update our cover photo to represent our thought leadership ideas about how social media would make a difference to our individual lives and businesses. We belive it’ll be an easy and appealing way for you to empathize our passion towards what we do – Social Media Strategy & Analytics.

Also do let us know on what do you think of our new Timeline so far? We’re always open to suggestions, so please let us know what kinds of posts or cover photos you’d like to see from us in the comments below. We look forward to connecting with you via Facebook Timeline!

Social Media Education - A thought!

Last week Wednesday we had our first Twitter chat on “Is Education ready to embrace Social Media” and I must confess I was quite amazed with the kind of response that we received. Honestly I was under the impression that this idea would face a lot of inertia and that people from the Academic world would not be willing to accept this change.

But the actual reality was at exact 180degrees. People really want to use Social Media as an easily & readily available Learning Management or a Content Management tool. But then I was stuck on what’s stopping them. Now this was a billion dollar question, and just like any billion dollar question this had a simple logical answer but a complex execution algorithm (talk of complexity of simplicity).

What I learnt during the Twitter Chat (FYI - look for hash-tag #TSP_EduForum, it’s an acronym for TheSocialPeople Education Forum) is that there seems like there is general agreement among social media users/evangelists/consultants that education is crucial. However social media education can be quite vast and can pretty much mean anything. It's like trying to teach someone to be a mechanic in a few days or even a few hours, there's a lot to learn. The challenge is keeping the learning community up-to-date on those latest tools/tactics/strategies.

As you know social media is a very dynamic in nature and what you learn today might change tomorrow. So if we keep seeing new tools/techniques/strategies emerging almost daily, how to we create and administer social media training programs? My answer, focus on the core of social media principles or global best practices. Here are the main topics I would consider (I'm going to leave a few out because I'm more interested in what you have to say):

1. High level Social Media Strategy (This I feel is the most important and vital topic. Wrong strategy and you or your idea is doomed.
2. Identification of the right social media tools/platforms that suites your need
3. How to identify existing social media communities (or create new ones if needed)
4. Social Media measurement or metrics.
5. Understanding how to monitor social media and respond to sentiments shared by users\
6. Benefits/value of social media and risks of social media with effect exit mechanism, just in case.
7. Resources needed to succeed in social media
8. Case studies/examples/results of social media campaigns

So here I have listed 8 high level topics that make up a part of what I consider the Social Media Education core. Instead of focusing social media education efforts on details (that will change quickly) I think it would be much more valuable to focus on applications that are relatively constant to rephrase this more scientifically, strategize and use media that is evolving rather than mutating. I would also strongly advice that the herculean tasks of planning and strategizing details can be left to the experts who are implementing the actual strategy or to the consultants that are advising the company.

Do you agree with me? What other topics would you add to the Social Media Education Core?

For those of you who would like be a part of our Twitter Chat, it happens every Wednesday at 10AM Indian Standard Time. Don't forget to hash-tag - #TSP_EduForum.

Fashion2.0: How Social Media to revolutionize Fashion Industry.

I happened to come across this article on the Forbes which particularly picked my interest for 2 main reasons:

1.     It had the magical words "social media"

2.     The Content had something that I and my colleague Vikram had been discussing lately – Taking Fashion Industry on the Social Media.

Whether you are interested in fashion or not, it is difficult to escape the constant onslaught of information on the latest fashions and trends that we receive through social media and the internet. This is a fact that none of us would deny. Considering the quantum of information one gets to see on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube the fashion Industry is definitely becoming accessible to the general public or should I say reaching a larger group of people.

 The beauty of this initiative of taking fashion industry on the Social Media is that one gets to see all sorts of opinions and dialog on a fashion trend or outfit rather than the traditional one way opinion of the designer. Just like in any other industry Social Media once again proves that would help bridge the buyer-seller relationship with its multi dimensional communication channel.  It also makes it evident that, in this era of the social media, fashion designers and retailers are no longer operating in an ivory tower or for solely the red carpet. Because of the close relationships they now have with customers on social networking sites, many have adopted an "ask and ye shall receive" policy.

As quoted in the Forbes article it’s undoubting that Social Media would the next big muse of the Fashion Industry and its here to stay for quite some time.

Just recently there has been a rush of retailers advertising & setting up programs to help gather customer feedback on the fashions and trends for the season ahead including Debenhams, ASOS, Calvin Klein and likes. This show much customer sentiments matter to the fashion designers and fashion brands. Now just imagine the same in case of private fashion boutique owners who have selected and limited customers. One bad design might just cost them a loyal customer... forever!

Yet another interesting website that I came across is www.jooraccess.com. Started by a Mona Bijoor who is a seasoned brand consultant for the fashion industry. Joor basically is a network that makes it easier for brands and boutique owners to connect and conduct business with their customers in an interactive and collaborative manner. It can be called as the Facebook of Fashion world in lay definition. This again shows how Social Media can play a vital role in the Fashion Industry.

Now considering all this above gyaan and cases on how Social Media can benefit the Fashion Industry, I don’t really know if this liberalization or the democratization of the fashion world by the social media good or bad as I’m not really a fashion expert. This is something that time shall tell us. But from a lay man’s perspective any creation created in an collaborative environment has always been a masterpiece. Hopefully such would also be the case in Social Media Fashion.

... and let the Games begin! **Roll Drums & sounds of Bugle**

TheSocialPeople is proud to be associated with the Nexus Toastmasters Cricket Tournament as a Platinum Sponsor. The Sporty battle is happening at Bangalore, Veterinary Grounds, Hebbal on 29th of January 2011.

Be there for some action packed good Cricket!