Content is the king

When we talk about an interactive media like internet, the term "Content" generally means supplying information or entertainment and the businesses, no matter big or small are welcome to participate.The most exciting thing about social media is that anyone with an internet connection and computer can publish any kind of content they can create.

Hooking the audience to the social media is the key, not just lingering over the social media and seeing its audience come and go. The strategic key is to make the audience come and stay. For example, a magazine cannot just take its printed content and publish on its online edition, it will fail immediately, because there is more that is required to be successful in the era of modern social media. the magazine readers of today, require not just visuals but also audio or even videos.They need more involvement by providing quick feed back and comments of magazine post, unlike in the past when the limited letters to the editor space catered to that need. There is no guarantee, that a successful print magazine will also be successful on social media.

Today, scientists are publishing their findings online, without having to wait to get their work published, like in the past. Similarly, musicians compose music and disseminate it on the web to welcome on hand comments and feedback regarding their work.

Advertising over the interactive social media is promising, the biggest advantage is, the initial posts are just to attract the attention of audience, once the marketers have their attention, the scenario can be left to flow on its own. The user himself will get involved during the interactive process of social media marketing.

Advertisers are usually reluctant to induce novelty in their advertising campaigns, and internet is still a new medium for the marketers. If its value is truely understood, companies can achieve remarkable results.

Skilled social media marketers, hire paid content writers, that create content each day, everyday to keep the advertisements fresh and crisp, attracting wide audiences. The successful marketers of today rate social media as the new marketplace of ideas, information, experiences, products and services - in short a marketplace of content.

This post is inspired by 'Content is King' by Bill Gates (1996)

The dark side of social media

Social media marketing is considered a hot cake for promoting businesses, no matter how big or small, but like any other technology it brings a set of drawbacks with itself. It is important to realize the cons while devising a strategy for social media marketing, this will make the job easier for marketers to tackle with the issues attached.

Lets us first talk about Authenticity of Information, we can see the world of social media being bombarded with content, related to information and entertainment every passing second. Now the question arises, how true is the information available on the web? how original are the reviews or feedback that is considered the backbone of social media marketing? Is the user content based on real experience by real users or just fabricated by paid content writers? These doubts and many other make social media unreliable in most cases.

Another concern faced by social media marketers is your views can get you in trouble, specially if you are talking about your competitors, government laws depending on what are the cyber laws in your location. Although many of us have the impression that they r free to say what they feel and express their views openly over social media, but it may land one in trouble especially if the political or religious views expressed are against the empowered group of the society. 

Risk and Safety is still a question mark on the internet, no matter how secure the medium becomes, one thinks for a second before providing their financial information over the internet, specially on the social media. In terms of marketing, investing in this area and speculating the profits is still not fully possible. Many skilled social media specialists provide consultancy and speculate the potential revenue that can be gained on the web.

Fake Profiles is another problem, and tackling them can be frustrating for marketers. These fake profiles obstruct the advertisers in gathering authentic user based feedback or market information. Some times the number of fake profiles are reduced by responsible social media websites, however eliminating them completely seems impossible.

My views on Popular Forms of Social Media

In this blog, I have tried to capture briefly my views on how different social media tools are being used in marketing. 

There are a number of forms of social media available over the web, targeting certain groups of audience, now it is the duty of marketers to identify the need to choose the right kind of social media for the marketing of their business.


These include;

Blogs Amongst the most favourite, this form of SMM is thriving today. Web-Log eventually shortened to Blog was started not so long ago by Justin Hall, a student at Swarthmore College, blogging about video games and consoles. Blogging flourished with the launch of Blogger and LiveJournal after 1999. Today, almost a 100,000 new blogs are created each dayrepresenting a huge audience belonging from different segments of society.

The main advantage of blogging includes direct communication with the (potential) customer. It focuses of the most successful strategy of marketers that is "word of mouth".  For a blog to be successful, it is important to engage with fellow bloggers and community, avoid negativity and promote well being and positivity as a whole.

Adam Curry "Podfather"

Podcasts & Webinars Adam Curry, a VJ at MTV also known as "Podfather", is considered to be the pioneer of today's podcasts, capturing attention of mainstream audience.  to create effective audio podcasts, it is vital to select an articulate moderator, who can create talking points, without taking more time of listeners than necessary. Specialists in this area believe adding music adds to the impact of a podcast.  Creating podcasts and webinars can be a strategic component of the marketing plan.

The best feature of marketing with webinars and podcasts is that it targets a large number of audience and collects feedback instantly. The target audience can ask questions on spot, without having to travel to attend the informational or marketing campaign as in the case of old style seminars.

Online Articles, White Papers and E-Books The world wide web (www) is filled with articles submittedon a daily basis to article directories by content writers around the globe. These article sharing websites or article directories pay these content writers and publish their writings, mostly in shape of 500 word length articles. Today, we see many businesses hiring these content writers and spreading information as well as goodwill for their business across the web.

Marketing through publishing articles or electronic books is considered a clever strategy of marketers that no doubt effects  the decisions of general public specially, reference groups.

Videos & Photo Sharing being the most fashionable form of today's marketing, is famous all around the world, young and old alike. Video sharing's history begins with the monopolist"Youtube", it came and conquered and still considered a market leader of video sharing media on the web. Its success revolves mostly on promoting and creating interesting chanels and encouraging user based content. Same goes for Photo sharing websites, like Flicker and Instagram, users promote themselves and their businesses through interesting images and portfolios. The success speaks for itself for the businesses thriving globally.

Social Networks came into fashion with the launch of Mspace, a website to attract the friendster group of the society, soon Mark Zuckerberg, a student at Harward University caught the idea and established thefacebook exclusively for Harward university affiliates, later on the name changed into "facebook" and it went global. From there the rise of social media networking took off and today it is considered an online service to establish relationships based on friendships, kinship, shared interests, ideas or business.

Marketing on social media networks has become vital specially in case of startup businesses or BtoC marketing. The business marketers link the company website with social media sites like facebook or linkedin to communicate to their target market.

Micrblogging is not a famous term, and is not referred frequently in SMM, however the famous micrblogging platform like Twitter is widely used and reffered to by the business marketers. Microblogging resembles blogging, however the word limit is shorter for the blogposts. Unlike traditional blogging, microblogging offers small content sharing, sharing of individual images and links to videos.

Mobile and Location Marketing becoming more doable with in the today's world of connectivity. people want information on-the-go and mobile apps (applications) has made it easier than ever. Today almost all the big names in market have mobile applications, delivering up-to-date and handy information to its users.

Small businesses have realized the importance of reaching their target audience through their mobiles, and gained quick success in meeting their goals.

What is Social Media Planning Cycle?

Social Media Planning is a continuous process that needs constant monitoring by skilled media marketers. It is important to keep in view all the steps involved in the planning cycle 

Social Media Planning Cycle 

From the book on Social Media Marketing, by Barker, Melissa, International Edition.

Coca-Cola's impressive Social Media Tactics

Talk about the guru in social media marketing, Coca-cola being the third most recognizeable global brands does it like no other, be it Twitter, instagram or youtube, Coca-Cola is seen and loved everywhere.

Maintaining its fresh image and making it alive eachday, Coca-Cola reminds audience of its constant presence in the market. Its impressive social media tactics can be adopted by mainstream brands for the successful marketing campaigns of their business.

Coca-Cola is basically everywhere, and its prompt marketers and social media specialists understand the importance of prompt marketing in today’s global media war. They could have just relied on traditional marketing strategies to capture their market share, but they did not stop there. It seems they came to conquer on social media with their powerful strategy.

Here is an overview of my favourite brand's success on social media, popular amongst young and old alike;

Engaging the audience:

Coca-Cola on Twitter with a huge fan following of 3.23 million global followers tweeting every other minute, totalling a 206,000 tweets is engaging its audience in the marketing of their every new business idea. These days the “share a coke” campaign is making stirs on the social media. The audience share a bottle of coke with their loved ones, and tweet it to be a part of the global brand promotion. 

Direct communication with consumers:
Coca-Cola is just doing it right with directly communicating with their consumers. They have a market analyst just to reply the tweets on twitter. This shows the brand's zest of being involved in consumer feedback and comments. 

Influencer/ Celebrity Involvement has been one of the core strategies of coke's marketing plan since the brand's inception. We see celebrity's from all walks of life like showbiz, sports, music etc endorsing the brand. In the picture below, we see Ryan Seacrest, a social influencer, popular among the American youth.

Collecting instant feedback everyday  and gaining trust of its target market by encouraging to make their brand the talk of today. this cute insta pic brought back 21.7 thousand love likes for the brand together with 560 comments.

Sponsoring global events has always been a part of marketing strategy of Coca-Cola, which results in recognition, reassurance and reinforcement of the brand in the minds of its target market. Coke has been involved in world cup matches of Cricket, Soccer, Basketball etc, cancer awareness programs, Musical programs like coke studio and many others.

Coca cola crushes social media, an interesting blog by Kevin Shively

learning points for other brands could be seamlessly encouraging and enganging your target market in your marketing campaigns, coke is doing it better than ever,  encouraging and endorsing music and sports events, popular in young and old alike, embrace new mediums and channels of communication and outreach.

Source: ideas taken from Coca Cola twitter and instagram official venues.

Social Media - a compulsory ingredient of today's business

It is important to understand what does the term Social Media Marketing means and why is it so important in today’s world? Social Media Marketing (SMM) uses social media portals or websites to influence consumers towards a brand. Typically, the goal is to make the customer buy the brand or product or avail the service.

Many conventional or traditional marketers do not understand the importance of SMM and associate certain myths with it like;
~It is just a FAD
~It is just for the youth
~There is no financial return in SMM
~SMM doesn’t suit this type of business
~It is new
~It is time consuming (and most of the time , time wasting)
~It is free for all

In the real world however these myths hold no reality …

How brands run giant social media chanels. Follow, one of my favorite bloggers on how National geographic is nailing it

SMM is a different approach in the marketing industry and that is the only reason why it is not accepted widely by conventional marketers. Several areas distinguish SMM from traditional marketing, depicted in the table below;

Difference	Traditional Marketing	Social Media Marketing
Control vs contribution	The marketer chooses to control the market i.e the presence of competitiors or the good views on substitutes, it will focus on the brand’s exclusivity	The bloggers or social media marketers invite the competitors or general public to provide views and reviews about the product and its substitutes
Trust building	Traditional marketing spins around exaggeration and highlighting of the brand, this fails to win the trust of general public or consumer	Social media chooses a down to earth strategy and involving the consumers on a personal level, this wins the hearts and trust of general public

source: Social Media Marketing, by Barker, Melissa, International Edition.