This blog post has stemmed from the interesting discussion that my earlier post generated ‘Is advertising on Facebook called Social Media Marketing?” Mostly all agreed that while advertising on Facebook helped the marketer focus to the right target audience, it was still advertising. Social Media Marketing on the other hand implicitly calls for user participation and building dialogue. Both of which remain absent with Facebook advertising form of communication. To me if there is one thing that segregates social media from others is the use of word ‘Audience’. There is no audience in Social Media Marketing. Period. Audience is to whom you announce ...

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It”s important to understand how social media marketing is gaining ground in today”s times. By following four basic principles, social media marketing positively impacts the consumers on behalf of the brand. Let me start by listing down the basic principles of social media: 1.    Seeking User Participation, 2.    Building Value for the community 3.    Allowing User Generated Content (UGC) and 4.    Listening to people’s point of view Traditional media is re-inventing itself by adopting these principles for itself. Let’s take each principle and explain it in context to our emerging social scenario: 1. Seeking User Participation: Most General Entertainment Channels (GECs) of India and elsewhere have begun ...

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This is the second part of the article on how Mr. Barack Obama used social media to win the presidential elections. Do read the first part of the series 4.    Use of Audio Visual Media: The campaign managers created a page on Flickr where people could see pictures of his campaigns, his personal moments with his family and as a presidential candidate reaching out to people. All these visuals created a sense of him being there everywhere. It gave the opportunity for people to follow his campaign virtually and see the success he was getting in each state. On his separate channel on ...

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(This is two part series article) I just had to use social media as his middle name. It is important to analyze how Barack Obama could leverage his views and personality to reach out to voters using social media tools. American elections created history of sorts – one and the most obvious one being elected as the first African American as President. Second and not so obvious one being use of social media for his presidential campaign by his campaign managers. Let’s break it down into steps. 1. Voter Generated Content: First thing that stood out of the campaign was his website. It ...

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Mark Zuckerberg, opened up advertising on Facebook last year taking the approach of ‘social actions’ of its users. He explains it in his press release that “The core of every user’s experience on Facebook is their page and that’s where (all) businesses are going to start as well. Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people. Social Ads can appear either within a user’s News Feed as sponsored content or in the ad space along the left side of the site.” (Read: Are Facebook ads conversational marketing?) If you become the ...

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Most number of mails that we get revolve around content for blog. It appears that most bloggers start off writing about a certain subject and then slowly lose way. That happens because they feel that there aren’t many readers on the subject they are writing!! Well, maybe that could be the case if you are writing about very specialized subjects. For most of the others there could be other problems plaguing us. We have listed out few of them. Check out for yourself if your blog is not party to this. ·         Blogs are fairly unregulated in content. But be careful and ...

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Unless you have been living in the caves of Afghanistan, it is likely that you would have heard, if not become a registered member, of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, the 24 year old boss of Facebook opened up advertising on Facebook last year taking the approach of ‘social actions’ of its users. He explains it in his press release that “The core of every user’s experience on Facebook is their page and that’s where (all) businesses are going to start as well. Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people. It’s no ...

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