If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world; if you sat down to watch all the videos uploaded on YouTube as we speak, you would need around a 1000 years! A quiz on such interesting trivia kicked off the social media workshop that Prayag conducted last week at L&T Infotech for their leadership and marketing teams. The workshop was a culmination of an engagement we did for the company that included creating the social media guidelines and evaluating their social media roadmap.
Social media networking is thought to be a millennial thing, a fad, or, at best, as a wave that will impact B2C companies. Our workshop sought to dispel this myth and educate the audience, through real life case studies and current research that B2B companies can benefit as much, if not more, by embracing social media. We also did some hands-on exercises which helped the audience get a first-hand feel on how they could use social media tools to achieve business goals.
Gauging by the participation and feedback, I can confidently say that the marketing team, which is spearheading L&T Infotech’s social media initiative, achieved its objective of laying a solid foundation for the company’s social media program. Also, by creating a comprehensive guidelines document, they have ensured that the rules of the game are clearly defined upfront. This would definitely stand them in good stead as they ramp up activities.
At Prayag, we interact with a number of companies, all of whom, without exception, are curious, intrigued and wanting to know more about social media and how it can be interleaved into their marketing strategy. We must doff our hats to L&T Infotech though for taking the important first steps and getting started on their social media strategy.

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With about 35 hours of video being uploaded every minute and youtube becoming the 2nd most searched engine after google, there is no doubting that online video watching has come to stay! The moot point is though, does this have business relevance especially in a B2B context?

Our take, corroborated by a ton of research on this subject, is that video has an important role to play in the B2B marketing mix. In fact, there are two situations where video can play a very effective role- one is to illustrate a concept creatively and two is to help “humanize” the brand.

On conveying a concept or an idea, check out these videos IBM’s video – smarter energy (a part of the smarter planet campaign) http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=smarter+energy&aq=f

Accenture’s video to explain cloud computing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eq3Sj1GGs8&playnext=1&list=PLAC82DD3F64D6015C

and Infor’s campaign against large ERP systems – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYjFFCfK4k.

On humanizing the brand, video can be used for customer testimonials, interviewing your experts, or for your management to express their point of view. Cisco has used video quite effectively in this context.

Now, you may say, all this is great but making a video is expensive and time consuming. Well, not anymore. While making highly creative films including perhaps concept videos may be time consuming, interviews and chat shows can be done very economically and in quick time using the Cisco flip or Kodak’s pocket video camera. And then, you could use software like windows media player to edit and publish.

Believe it or not, it takes no more than a couple of hours from start to finish to produce HD quality video clips.

So, what are you waiting for? As marketers who are fine tuning their mix for the next year, go ahead and explore the possibilities in the realm of online video…………..

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Do you often feel overwhelmed by the deluge of information that is available online and wish there is someone to organize it for you and shares it with you regularly, thus making it unnecessary for you to spend your time on the same exercise? Wouldn’t that be a cool thing? That is exactly the role of a content curator. Clearly, content curation has become a big deal with the explosion of online and social media. In fact, it is no longer sufficient to scan through articles and new-items but it has almost become imperative to look at blogs, youtube and twitter ( for links to more articles for instance).

Content curation requires not just research skills but also a high degree of contextual skills- to sift through a ton of information and cull out just what is relevant is not as trivial as it seems. Also, oftentimes, one also needs to synthesize this information and present it to the audience in an easy-t0-assimilate fashion.

So, among the many trends that social media have popularized, here is one more- content curation. Content curation is also a great opportunity- for marketers who were dreading about creating more and more “original” content, content curation offers a great alternative. Content marketing is therefore today both about content creation and curation – the smart ones are those who figure out the right blend!

Do you agree?

Popularity: 12% [?]

As a species, humans have always been concerned about recogniton and approval – for work done, for achievements, and even for just who they are. Little wonder then that this need for status should continue in the virtual world as well. Whether it is someone boasting that he has 1477 Facebook friends (it is besides the fact that he has not met most of them – ever) or that she has n number of Twitter followers, we tend to seek validation of the fact that we are popular, liked and ‘followed’, that our blogs are creative, that we have the most interesting status updates, etc.

And there are companies smart enough to cash in on this.  Twournal is a website that allows you to compile all your tweets into a book or journal which you can then sell: http://twournal.com/

Another company allows you to order a mug or keychain that has photos of all your Facebook friends: http://www.crowdedink.com/

And I am sure that such products that showcase one’s online persona will only increase in the near future.

With a blurring of lines between your real and virtual identity, don’t be surprised if you have more online friends  – people you have never met but regularly talk to – than ‘physical’ friends you meet for a coffee! In such a situation, can concerns about your online social status be far behind?

We may even soon have a Bollywood movie, in which the father forbids his daughter to marry a young man, saying “Uski aukat kya hai – Facebook pe mere 755 dost hai, or woh- FB pe hai hi nahi! “

Popularity: 12% [?]

I came across this term in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article. As we all know, today, one can own media ( by creating your own content); likewise earned media refers to getting publicity through stakeholders working for you- example sharing your content, rating your product or service positively, engaging with you on community sites etc. At the other end of the spectrum is hijacked media- which is when irate customers choose to spread the negative word. Then, in a sense, your messaging gets hijacked!

This is one of the biggest concerns that a lot of companies have when they are exploring a social media strategy. They want to know how to minimize this.

While policies and processes can be put in place, direct communication with customers does mean that we need to be able to take the good with the bad. It is better to handle negative feedback gracefully, and see if there is merit in the criticism and fix it, rather than try to suppress it. There are many examples of companies that have tried the latter approach and found it backfiring.

What is your view?

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If you have decided to jump onto the social media bandwagon you already have the typical to-do list for adopting SMM :

1. Blog
2. Twitter channel
3. Linkedin Profile and Group
4. Facebook page with lots of fans

The main question is now “what” to do ,but “where” to start. Doing a google search on “how to use social media marketing” will make things even more confusing – it yields 389,000,000 results. Instead, attack this project with a 3-step strategy:

• Think. Jot down a simple set of business goals. What do you want to achieve through your SMM initiative ? For example,
  1. Setup a blog to spread word around about yourself and your offerings
  2. Create a linkedin group to showcase your technical expertise
• Plan. Once you have the bigger picture in place, create a monthly plan – focussing on one activity at a time. There will be no neat end-dates for the plan – it will move like the proverbial “slow and steady tortoise”. Do not expect to get your blog running, your facebook page all completely set, and your linkedin forum started with 100 members in 2 months. Instead of putting 10 fingers in 10 dishes and getting them all mucky, taste them one at a time. For example, if you want to start a professional network on linkedin as a priority, concentrate on that in the first month.
• Execute. Do not wait to see if the plan will work. As long as you know the expected ROI, understand the well-accepted fact that SMM is here to stay – you can either go online or be gone ! Get a dedicated resource to start off immediately.

Remember, it is a 40km+ marathon, not a 100m dash.
Ready, get set , go…oops !
You are going to stumble a lot initially. People will blog, comment, post , tweet on their personal sites easily; but ask them to actually do it as part of their work and they will look at you as though you’ve asked them to scale the Everest ! The key here is to make it worth their while. Have eye-catching content on your blogs, create interesting topics of discussion on your forum, put up polls, reward good contribution – and the fan following is bound to increase. Word-of-mouth is very powerful – use it to get more and more people hooked on.

When we,at Prayag, worked on our social media initiative a couple of years back, I had to beg people to post a blog entry – even micro-managed their calendar forcing them to post a new blog every week !! Now, the fact that you are reading this blogpost shows that we have made it ! We have a forum on linkedin called “Tech Marketing Forum” and a Facebook page with 200+ fan following .

Half way there !
Most runners lose steam here and stagnate. The key is to leverage your online branding to seal your presence at the top.
Once you have the basic framework ready , viz. a blog , a linkedin forum with 100 members, a facebook profile with 100 fans, a twitter channel – then it is time to take it to the next level. Use online advertising for greater visibility, participate in other forums/blogs to increase interaction, promote your blogs and forums through newsletters and events, and invite industry experts to contribute. You already have a captive audience – it is upto you to use it right. Show the C-level executives at your own organization what SMM has done for the business and get them to join – use their help to showcase yourselves as thought leaders.

Is the finishing line in sight ? Not yet !
Remember to constantly measure your efforts. There are lots of resources online to tell you about social media metrics. Use them to stay on track.

All that is fine, but have I not digressed from the topic – why so many Kenyans win marathons?

There have been many speculations, but a key factor is the Kenyan training regime which is known to be notoriously difficult. Kenyans work hard and run hard – it is their perseverance which gets them the gold medals. The same applies to those who undertake the initiative of using the social media platform for marketing themselves – stick to it for as long as it takes and it will pay off.

What have your experiences with social media taught you ? Do share your lessons with us.

Popularity: 9% [?]