The future of Social Media Marketing

Looking back in time, we dread how our forfathers used to communicate and market their businesses. Now, I can confidently say, our generations might feel the same way as we do today.

The modern form of Social Media Marketing (SMM) has taken over the world, we see twitter, facebook, instagram signed in from every corner of the world, but whats next? Will this fever reach its next level? And what possibly could be the next step in Social Media Marketing of today?

In this post, i will touch the lines on the future of SMM, and shed some light on how we will market ourselves in the coming days.

Microblogging and location marketing comes first; I see a tinge of future and modernity in this kind of social media. Many hi-tech businesses are choosing this way of SMM because of its novelty. Connectivity under fingertips has been made possible by mobile apps technology. I see how this technology will evolve further in coming days. People are ordering food using apps, video chatting while travelling in trains, and monitoring their health using mobile apps.  That time is not far when people will be seen downloading pizzas from their apps :)

Podcast and audio broadcasting takes the second number on my list, the evolution of podcast is beyond imagination.

Social networking websites comes next. People have already started tying knots on facebook, so we can very well predict the future of social networking websites.

Check out this interesting post by Chris Merentis on the future of social media
5 predictions for future of social media


Chris predicts, the future of social media as we know it today.

Virtual Teams - Interesting facts

Technology is amazing when you see someone at the other corner of the globe interacting with you and sharing ideas on the same topic. Their views reflect their background and influence of culture. Agreeing on something with cross cultural teams is a critical skill that every business professional should acquire.

Todays businesses are all about cutting costs and improving productivity. Low cost engineering centers are becoming the norm in high effort-low income regions like India, Phillipines and Latin America. When there are operating offices in these countries, there is always a need for virtual teams.

Here is a very interesting HBR post by karen Sobel on the potential of virtual teams. She calls 'Virtual Distance' the "silent killer of innovation, productivity, and project success"

Hidden traps on virtual teams

Social Media and Crisis Management

In businesses, crisis is always on the cards especially for corporations and multinationals. The group assignment that my team and I selected was on crisis management of Volkswagen (VW) which I enjoyed a lot. The good thing about this assignment was that I could find a wide range of case studies from Nestle to KLM, where the companies handled the crisis in a diametrically different ways. How critical time factor is in responding to crisis is the bottom line factor in success and failure.

For example, in case of VW, they did almost everything right in handling the diesel gate crisis. But because they took some days in responding to this scandal, the issue of lost trust was aggravated. The issue of lost trust not only involves customers, but employees, dealers, government, and the public - all are affected. The main lesson is that companies should have a clear social media crisis management strategy that should be implemented as soon as they crisis is realized. For that to happen, a team closely monitoring activities with ready made scenarios and some action plan (in case they hit) should be in place.

Jay Baer, ‘The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social’,