Avatar, the movie, was SIMPLY mind blowing! I remember going into the theater thinking that this is going to be another 3D sci-fi movie. Little did I know, what was in store for me. I felt I was walking in that jungle and James Cameron totally impressed me with the use of Sci-Fi technologies. I had never experienced something even close to this… and of course! all my friends were surprised since I was the last one to catch this movie.
Coming out of the theater, I was convinced that the movie is setting a new standard for movie makers, marketers and brands seeking exposure.
Needless to say, social media had a role to play in this.
The Beginning:
Avatar has its own Facebook and Twitter pages. That’s getting to be standard these days. The 27,000+ follower Twitter account has info on the coming prequel – yes… not a sequel.
Before the launch of the movie, followers would retweet updates to their followers, who (if interested) would do the same, spreading the word all over the web. The Facebook Page is impressive, with over 1.5 million fans.
The Tactic:
The red carpet premiere of Avatar was broadcast live to web audiences on video streaming web site Ustream. Fans could watch the video on the film’s MySpace page in addition to the Ustream website. This Red carpet was a week before the actual release just in time to create a buzz…
The Conquest:
On December 3, MTV.com put together a Facebook-hosted, LG-sponsored webcast called “Avatar Live.” Director James Cameron, producer Jon Landau, and stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana were interviewed by MTV News’ Josh Horowitz, the questions were submitted by fans in the days leading up to the day of the event. The 30-minute interview was the the first time many huge Hollywood names sat down to take questions from Internet fans… If all this is not Social Media, then I wonder what is?
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
Digital branding in the new internet marketing age is creating the need for marketers to understand how they can measure social media interactions with their brand, how to measure social brand loyalty and create social brand equity. Companies are more and more interested in learning how to make social media work. There are many assets on the internet that a company can create using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and many other such channels. And then this creates a need for them to manage their digital presence and brand.
Here are some channels that companies have frequently started to build:
1. Facebook Fan pages
2. FB Connect
3. Twitter Channel
4. SEO and Ad Targeting
5. Social media enabled company web sites
But the HOT question still remains – What next? How to set goals and identify gaps?
Here are some of my recommendations:
1. Revenue Growth: The social media activity needs to have a strategy to increase revenue. It is important to choose social media tools and tactics that align with increase in engagement to ultimately drive revenue growth. This is a distribution channel to leverage information you develop daily. Don’t be afraid of social networking or Twitter. Virtual Goods and Gaming are huge opportunities as are fun quizzes and polls and other lead generation activities.
2. Know your customer: Social Gaming and social media are NOT for teenagers only. It is important to know your customer. Millions of people visit FB and Twitter daily. It is important to know where to find your customer or draw their attention if there is something you feel might of interest to them. Don’t limit yourself based on what you know, try to find out who your customer is and how easy it is for them to find you where they are.
3. Content is KING: Content is still relevant to draw the attention. If you have something that people value, they will be drawn to learn more. If they find it meaningful and relevant what you have, then they will come back for more. Eventually, you will build credibility and they will purchase – take us back to point #1.
4. Mobile: Be on TOP of your mobile strategy. My iPhone is my mini computer and I don’t go anywhere without it. So, If I am your consumer, you want me to have access to you while on the move. The cool iPhone Apps that allow you to check in to airlines, pay bills and order pizza are examples of how companies are finding ways to be close to the customer.
5. Build Relationships: Cannot emphasize on this enough. If you have strong relationships, competition will find it hard to break in. Response to customer queries is critical and don’t forget if one customer praises you – you will be making GOLD. So, do whatever it takes to keep your customer happy. I say give them such a incredible experience that they never switch to your competition and become your unpaid, voluntary brand ambassadors online and offline
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
Social media is still not widely utilized in the business world. Organizations are resistant to deploying them because they either don’t see a value for it or they feel their employees will be distracted by them. The reality, their opinions don’t matter. Social media is here to stay. The earlier they realize that it is simply a channel for having online conversation, the better it is for them. more…
Change Management #3 – Technology: Too Good To Be True… Two Deadly Misconceptions and Their Remedies
One of the biggest misconceptions of all time is that technology solves problems. Nothing can be further away from the truth. On the contrary, people solve problems and technology aids in building the solution – it is just a means to an end. The second and less visible but equally important misconception is that technology will somehow change people’s fundamental behavior like sense of responsibility, cooperation, etc. When implementing change we need to be cognizant of the networks and political structures in the organization. With change, the concern for self increases and even small changes can cause disproportional increase in stress and will cause unpredictable behavior. Technology is an amplifier. Applied properly, it can make a good situation better. Misapplied, it can make a bad situation worse. more…
The world is shrinking fast and the pace of communication is increasing proportionally. Even in the online world, it is easy to misunderstand or misconstrue what the other person means. You may be thinking about the same thing and expressing them differently or vice versa. Guy has brilliantly illustrated this through a few examples. This pitfall gets amplified in the online world. So, be extra cautious and make sure you don’t miss opportunities because of it. more…
Intimacy and Social Media? Hmm… What’s the connection? We don’t typically these words used in one sentence. But, think about it. This is what social media is. It brings us closer together with our friends and acquaintances. We are able to check on them every day, learn what’s happening in their world and provide support, guidance or empathy. Your online presence is an online YOU. It is just like seeing yourself in the mirror. This let’s you be more intimate with yourself! Online media is an amplifier of the social nature of human beings. more…
Author’s Journey #8 – How much of your book have you already written?
If you have been in your profession for a while, you will be surprised to know how much content you already have. Just dig into your hard drive and check your emails, memos, reports, blog posts, etc. After you have located existing content, consolidate them so that you can identify their usability and where they belong in your book. This will help you realize that book writing does not have to be an all consuming endeavor. more…
Magesh is an accomplished software professional focused on building enterprise value through creative use of technology. Magesh enjoys working with people and is passionate about bringing out the best in everybody to achieve results that are larger than the sum of individual accomplishments.
Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. It is a familiar and very close affective connection with another as a result of entering deeply or closely into relationship through knowledge and experience of the other. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity.
So, you may ask what does it have to do with Social Media?
Intimacy with others:
Every morning, we wake up and some of us reach out to our laptops. This is true for those who go to work. But what I have started to see is that most of us log into Facebook. What we are checking out is our news feed. We start to see what some of our friends are doing? What some of our business associates are saying? What some of those people we don’t know are talking about?
Suddenly, this simple act of checking our news feed cultivates into interacting with them. We start to comment OR like some of those news feed. And then there is a sudden feeling of being close to people we care about and those we would like to know better. There is a dialogue that makes us feel part of their lives and transparency that they display wins out instant trust with them….And this dialogue and transparency was the genesis of building relationships even before social media arrived.
Intimacy with self:
When we check out our Facebook profile, we see someone we love MOST – that is YOU/ME. And just seeing how closely we are knit with our friends, family and colleagues gives us an instant self-confidence. Man is a social animal. Social Media enables man to be SOCIAL at a level that was not possible before. On your Birthday, you thank Facebook, since you get messages from people all over the world. The large list of people wishing you “Happy Birthday” makes a public statement of how blessed you are – Don’t deny it! We all love attention on our Birthdays.
Intimacy in building relationships:
Twitter has made it possible to Follow people and really build an instant communication with them. The @replies make it possible for people to have a public conversation with some people you either have relationships with or want to build relationships with. And when you have communicated with them, it is possible you will send them a DM to further engage with them at a deeper level. Followed by personal email and then potential meeting. This intimacy even before you have met the person gives us a sense of a relationship based on the context of that communication. You know what are the interests, passions of the person you are engaging with – instantly giving intimacy to this budding relationship.
Intimacy is a human tradition and social media is emerging medium – Intimacy scores well with Social Media…
Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
Every day I come across people who either love or hate social media. Some say they get it and some DON’T. Some say it here to stay and some say it isn’t. Whatever the case, there are people who are leveraging it to build their identity, relationships and followers.
So, what are the characteristics of these ROCKSTARS…???
Like traditional ROCKSTARS, these social media ROCKSTARS have similar characteristics.
1. Talent par excellence - For any ROCKSTAR to get a celebrity status, what is needed most is talent. Similarly, the social media ROCKSTARS have a inherent talent to make their presence felt with their blogs, articles and videos. They seem to produce this with their focus on what is meaningful to their readers. They don’t talk about their hobbies or pets or travel plans – they know what their readers are looking for and offer that information in a powerful manner.
2. Performance – Traditional ROCKSTARS like Van Halen, Pink Floyd were brilliant performers. They took over the stage the minute they got on it. The crowds loved them and they kept them engaged with variations in their music and styles. Similarly, Social Media ROCKSTARS steer away from monotony. They innovate their writing, thinking and presentation. They keep the audience keep coming back for more.
3. Energy – Ever seen ACDC or Metallica on stage. These ROCKSTARS are powerhouses of energy. They keep going on. It is there energy that gets the entire stadium energized at a rock concert. Similarly, social media ROCKSTARS have tons of energy to come with new thoughts, new material and consistently deliver it to their target audience. It is their energy and stamina that gravitates the readers to them…they always have new material and their followers, readers can’t get enough of them…
By now you must be wondering what these Social Media Rockstars look like in real life – well! To me, people like Kevin Rose (co-founder of the top social news site ), Matt Inman (who consistently produce viral hit, after hit, or bloggers like Chris Brogan or Marshall Kirkpatrick (who spend a great amount of their time online creating guides and resources designed to help people) are the genuine social media rockstars!
ROCK ON GUYS….
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
The new year is coming on us and as we say good bye to 2009, which for most industries was a challenging year, we need to keep our eyes on the future. By far, 2010, will be the year when social media marketing is going to get really SERIOUS. You may ask, what does that mean?
For most part, like every maturing industry, here is what we can expect:
1. Consolidation: All the companies that support features and functions for Twitter and Facebook will see some consolidation.
2. Metrics Matter: For those managing marketing budgets, will start to put practices and metrics in place that will help them analyze social media spend and ROI.
3. More Adaptation: The MarketingSherpa report also notes U.S. marketers plan to increase budgets, cites eMarketer. Retail and e-commerce marketers are more likely to increase social media marketing budgets next year, 79%, followed by publishing and media at 63% and computer hardware and software companies at 55%.
Here is a small twist: It is true that 2010 will make ’social media’ more serious and that brings us back to SOCIAL in social media.
Whatever we might do in terms of setting policies, metrics and practices around quantifying and qualifying social media, we can be rest assured that PEOPLE and RELATIONSHIPS will rule the space of social media.
Here is what we can do to become more competent contributors and users of social media:
1. Are you listening? : If you really think that there is someone (other than moms) interested in what you ate for dinner, you can forget about it. As a contributor ( company or an individual), you will have to bring “quality” to what you have to say… and even more important than what you have to say, is what you listen. If you have the competency to listen on social media, there is good news. A new career is shaping up, people who can listen on social media will be valued and compensated. This is where new ideas, fresh perspectives and solutions will be created.
2. Are you giving good help? : For a decade, the business world had a nice ride telling what consumers should buy. With social media came a new revolution, where a consumer was able to make informed decisions based on help from people he/she trusted. The real question is “Is your customer service responsive?”, “Are you keeping the promises you make to your consumers?”, ” Are you willing to break some traditional and outdated rules that hurt your consumers?”
3. Are you building long -term relationships? : We have to give up our instant gratification mentality. Patience and perseverance – TWO KILLER APPS to WIN OVER MANY. Building long-term relationships means, you will have to first invest and nurture in those relationships – without getting anything out of them. And this means, to give a lot of help, a lot of value and a lot of time. Your content, your customer service and your response time – need to be impeccable to RULE the SOCIAL MEDIA Kingdom.
Welcome to 2010. I can’t wait to begin the ride….
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
I was recently in China and got to see the majestic ‘Great Wall of China‘ and the magnificent ‘Forbidden city‘. I took a lot of pictures and when I returned to my hotel, I went online to share my pictures with my family and friends – and suddenly I was surprised that I was not able to access Facebook. For some time, I thought that it was my internet connection and kept kicking my laptop for poor wireless connectivity. While I was fretting over this, I realized that I was able to access some sites like Google and Yahoo! but was not able to Facebook and Twitter.
Well! that meant that I was not able to share my pictures on Facebook and tweet about them to my friends and family. So, I went around inquiring about this ban.
A recent article on ReadWriteWeb states that while China’s constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the government employs a “subversion of state power” clause to punish those who are critical of it. This is why some social networking sites like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and Bing are blocked. Nevertheless, censorship in China is not new. I was confused because I was not convinced that all the Chinese internet users had stopped using these site. When I spoke to some people they said that inspite of the ban they knew how to go around it.
So, how are Chinese leveraging social media:
1. In China the adoption of social media has more to do with the career development, with the development of opinions of professional ideas, of sharing with others more than just a social engagement that we find in the U.S, said Josh Crandall, president of Netpop.
2. The social media landscape in China is vital. 253 million use the internet, over 107 million have a personal blog. Since blogging is so powerful. Often information from blogs gets picked up by mainstream media. Many companies share information on their blogs.
3.Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant messagingcomputer program in Mainland China, and the world’s third most popular IM service. Even the hotel staff were surprised to see the icon on my computer. Since its entrance into Chinese households QQ quickly emerged as a modern cultural phenomenon, now being portrayed in popular culture. Aside from the chat program, QQ has also developed many subfeatures including games, pets, ringtone downloads, etc. Needless to say, it is a billion dollar industry in China.
And you thought, that social media only meant social engagement. I learnt it can also be used to share information.
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
Marketers have long used sex appeal to market their products. There’s no denying that visual cues have been used for many successful advertising campaigns.
Take a look at these two videos, first one produced by Apple. You’ve probably already seen it on TV.
Watch for how it has a unique sex appeal — the choice of song and the dance moves and think whether you would be more prone to purchase the product…
For some of you – Your ROCK STAR imagination kicked into overdrive with this commercial, and you were identifying with your wild side…
Here is the second video, which got a lot of attention on Doritos “Create your own ads” contest.
The “Checkout Girl” spot was a great way to showcase all the flavors and even slides in comments on each. It’s nice that they didn’t use a skinny model as the checkout girl. This is a very original and professional looking spot and gets better and better until the crammed-in “obligatory crunch bite.”
For some of you, you wanted to be that guy in the line…
If a picture in traditional advertising was a thousand words, you can imagine the power of video…the sex appeal lies in how close you get to act on your intent to purchase…ARE You READY to BUY?
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
Many companies are struggling to leverage social media for retaining and recruiting talent. And then there are companies which believe social media sites and interactions distract the employees and lead to loss of productivity.
CURRENT SITUATION
A recent study found that, in the United States, 77% of employees with Facebook accounts check in with the community from the office. And, the amount of time they’re spending in this part of the online world is growing. In the United Kingdom, another study found that 57% log in regularly from work, costing their employers 40 minutes a day.
Since, engaging in these activities is not limited over lunch time and requires individuals to spend time on these sites many times a day, it is estimated that it translates to lost productivity of $2.25 billion a year.
CONFLICTING PERSPECTIVE
The lack of productivity obviously means that companies should block these sites. But there are many companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sodexo, Sun where they are trying to embrace and adapt these technologies. They are trying to identify best practices to explain and educate employees to explore business benefits and create opportunities for employee retention.
PricewaterhouseCoopers representative says “Instead of trying to shut it down, I think we should try to embrace these technologies, put in a nice policy that governs it and explain to users the risks related to it, provide some training and then see what business benefits we can have from it,”
CATCH 22
In the midst of all this confusion, many major consumer brands and retailers, such as Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) at @Starbucks, Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) at @BestBuyCMO and several airlines, are using social networks and social media sites, and you can also find some major business-to-business players, including Deloitte at @Deloitte and @FidelityVenture.
Many jobs that exist today in the marketplace require employees to communicate over social media channels. For marketing and public relations departments, paying attention to social media channels is critical. Companies are using these sites to listen to customers, spread the word about themselves and interacting with consumers. These channels are also available to employees within a company… so that they stay in touch with what his employer is putting out into the marketplace … so the need to follow the company Twitter account or becoming a fan of the company Facebook fan page.
WHAT NOW?
If done strategically, social media activity can have significant returns.
It is possible that blocking these sites might lead to some more employee productivity, but it comes at the expense of access to customers and potential business development opportunities.
So, rather than being in a fix, companies should be thinking of the best practices around these to bring a spotlight to growth, And probably tolerate some employee distraction.
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
We all understand that customer is a priced asset. And most companies have tried to listen to the customer for forging innovation. The only caveat to this is – that how we have listened to the customer in the past is irrelevant now. There is new phenomenon that is emerging with social media. Pushing out “listening to them” campaigns alone is just not going to cut it. You need to adapt to the new skills to listen actively… and in doing so, you need to give up the old ways – because only the adaptive survive in the marketplace.
It is the recession that tests your listening skills. Many companies have suffered because they were not competent in listening to their customers – e.g GM, Linen N Things, Circuit City etc.
Here are some ways you can listen
1. Engage in a continual dialogue: A company needs to keep engaged through company’s own Web portals, blogs and experts’ blogs. The rising chorus of social network users (4 out 5 US adults online interacted with a social site in ‘09 – Forrester) continue to up the expectation for brands and companies with respect to presence and interaction online. The 24×7 consumer and social technologies have enabled new-media users with an ongoing interaction cycle that necessitates attention from brands.
2. React quickly. A new study that was just released from Cone reports claimed that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools — up from 59% the year before… and that these users are conversing with brands more often: 37% say they interact at least once a week — which is up from one in four when Cone did the study last year. There are huge quantities of information and opinion people distribute on the internet. You need to be able to collect and process this information and respond quickly to any feedback or misaligned information that could potentially hurt your brand.
3. Cut through the clutter: Segmentation and being knowledgeable about your target customer helps you understand exactly ‘who your customer is’. Their psychographic and demographic profiles can help you determine how to listen to them. Acknowledge the importance of cutting through the clutter to reach overloaded consumers.
Securing brand equity in the recession requires companies to add resources and capital to innovation and communication. This downturn will accelerate efforts of agile and smart companies to listen to consumers’ needs to keep their brands from slipping.
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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
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Avatar, the movie, was SIMPLY mind blowing! I remember going into the theater thinking that this is going to be another 3D sci-fi movie. Little did I know, what was in store for me. I felt I was walking in that jungle and James Cameron totally impressed me with the use of Sci-Fi technologies. I had never experienced something even close to this… and of course! all my friends were surprised since I was the last one to catch this movie.
Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC. Invincibelle helps women who live and work in a multicultural world to accelerate their professional growth.
Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world.
You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle
Many companies are struggling to leverage social media for retaining and recruiting talent. And then there are companies which believe social media sites and interactions distract the employees and lead to loss of productivity.