It wasn’t a very long time ago that us viewers would scramble to our mobile phones to vote for our favorite contestant on a reality TV show to either keep them in or vote them out.

A couple of years down the line, things are still relatively the same, with a few differences that have been subtly brought in. TV Shows have gotten bolder, the amount of talent that comes through every day has grown tenfold, Content has taken over star quality and the entire platform on which such shows built their successes on, have taken a dramatic turn.

With the help of social TV, producers have been able to expand their outreach to a much larger TV audience. Social TV has single handedly broken all barriers such as distance, time,etc. Now sitting in an office in India, an individual would be able to voice his opinion in a community dedicated to fans of a show such as American Idol. If the site imposes a certain set of restrictions, then the individual is free to voice his opinion on popular networking sites.

Twitter and Facebook are fast becoming what one would call, breeding grounds for social TV to grow. According to AppMarket, 59% of Americans surf the net and watch TV simultaneously. Its not only the reality TV shows that use social media in terms of marketing. Sitcoms, Dramas, live matches have all adopted social media marketing, most significantly noted by the presence of a little hashtag on the bottom of television screen while the show is on air. That little hashtag makes a world of difference. It personalizes your experience with the show and it lets you into its universe. It must be noted that the internet does have its fair share of trolls and certain undesirable characters waiting for a chance to create chaos. In order to combat this, experienced marketers use a technique called Social Curation. Social Curation helps in sifting the meaningful conversations from the meaningless ones, thereby helping out the people who actually would want their opinions to be heard.

While allowing the individual to enjoy his experience, social media has thrown in a couple of benefits as well. Shows such as The Big Bang Theory, World Wrestling Entertainment and Dexter encourage users by using a reward programme. According to Mashable, there was a 10% lift in the ratings of The Real Housewives of New York after real-time social media integration on their website.. Shows such as The X Factor run purely based on the decisions taken by their viewers. Pepsi, one of the biggest names in the world today, openly promotes the X Factor on their home page. The Pepsi website is a perfect example of Social Aggregation. Like Facebook and Twitter, it provides a platform for people around the world to share their social networking activities albeit being a lot more specific when compared to the others.

 The end credits of any TV show have now become a major area for further promotion. Besides revealing a sneak peek into the next episode whilst the end credits roll, TV shows encourage viewers to go online and use the apps present on their site. This not only is an engaging experience for the viewer, but also greatly benefits the show by generating publicity and increases its social mass appeal.

It’s no big secret that actors have taken to Twitter by storm. Almost anyone who’s relatively famous is on Twitter, interacting with their die-hard fans, tweeting about their daily lives and more than anything else revealing small bits of information from their respective TV shows/movies. It is a common tactic for an actor or an actress to tweet incessantly while their show is running on air. This causes a general clamor among social networking sites around the world. Even music for that matter (Take a look at One Direction for example, Twitter is dominated by their fans). However social media’s influence on music is a matter for another day.

Without including sports, no article on the impact of social media on television would be complete.

We each have our own favorite sport, support our own favorite team passionately, praise, defend or criticize their performances. We’ve come to a stage where stadiums all around the world are just a click of a button away. In a way, small is the new large.

The Barclays Premier League is a fine example of using social media to help promote the game. It uses the hashtag option, which pops up on your television screen during the course of the match. The anchors and the pundits do encourage viewers to use social media to voice their opinions on various forums and networking sites. Incentives such as contests are used and there is absolutely no downside to such a strategy. You can build your own team support on Facebook, Twitter and let your opinions be heard by millions across the world. This is probably one of the few areas where social curation falls short because the number of tweets and comments coming in are frankly far too great to limit.

While promoting any product, it is absolutely essential to have a proper marketing strategy. The same goes for TV shows when it comes to online promotion. Each step of the process must be planned and followed meticulously and the end product eventually speaks for itself.

No matter how good a social marketing campaign you may have, it is necessary to back that up with content that piques the interest of the audience. TV shows have the tendency to get cancelled in the blink of an eye if there is even a small drop in the ratings. The bottom line is, no matter what kind of tactics you devise to market your product, it better be worth selling. Content is now, king.

That being said, Social TV also has its part to play. If wielded well as marketing tool, the positives are innumerable. You may be part of the small minority of people who are skeptical about it and you may have valid reasons to justify your point. However, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Like it or hate it, Social TV is here to stay.

(Images courtesy, www.pepsi.com, www.cbs.com, bein SPORT)

Over the past few weeks the presidential campaign has been in full swing. President Barack Obama is looking to keep his office for a second term, with Republican Candidate Mitt Romney, eyeing his office. Three debates have taken place so far, with Obama having bested Romney in all three albeit by a small margin.

Apart from a well organized plan for the future, one of the things that worked towards President Obama‘s favor was his huge mass appeal on social networking sites. President Obama, an active figure on the micro-blogging site Twitter went about his debate bringing up topics that would cause a lot of clamor on desktops, smartphones and laptops around the world.

Facebook for example. According to a survey conducted a couple of months ago 35%-37% of the people wanted to add President Obama as a friend on Facebook. The same majority also backed him up to sit through a second term. However, a good 40%-48% of the people backed Romney to succeed him, based solely on the fact that he ‘looked more like a president’ than Obama did.

The tables have swung since. Thanks to an airtight political campaign, social media awareness and Clint Eastwood, President Obama once again managed to seize the upper hand from his fellow candidate. According to reports, during the third Presidential Debate, Team Obama posted 37 articles on Twitter which were retweeted over 117,000 times. Team Romney however tweeted a max of 8 articles; with an overall retweet count of just over 6000.

Obama has understood that the voice of the general public has grown significantly louder thanks to various social networking sites around the globe.  Facebook has grown in leaps and bounds since Obama took over the reins in 2008, and he has come to realize the true power of social media. He knows that with a few clicks of a button, a full blown movement can be organized. For example, take a look at Kony 2012. The campaign took the world by storm and brought to attention one of the world’s deadliest criminals who was unknown to at least three fourths of the world population. Such an event managed to capture the attention of the world’s superpowers and very few such as the president of the United States, decided to harness its true potential.

Social media is a double edged sword. If harnessed in the right way, the dividends that a person could reap are vast. According to a survey conducted by NBC, it was noted that Obama’s ‘Horses And Bayonets’ comment had a less effect than was presumed on a post debate analysis. However they also pointed out that most users felt that Romney had no new ideas to bring to the table regarding their foreign policy, and that worked in Obama’s favour. This just goes to prove that apart from having a vast appeal on networking sites, it is absolutely essential to have strong facts and ideas to back you up. If there is a dearth in the latter then it won’t be long before the crowd turns on you.

Social media is leveling the playing field in sharing news and getting the word out to the world. What it does is that it brings the general public into the room with the decision makers. They sit, listen and pass judgment on the ideas and decisions that are taken and voice their opinions. This leads to the creation of mini-papers, blog posts, polls, etc on which the users can debate and discuss in real time. What it does is that it makes the present set of leaders sit up and listen to the needs of the common man, something that has been ignored for a very long time. People-To-People communication is replacing point to mass media control, which the president has used effectively and to his advantage. With the introduction of sites such as Twitter, the impact that an idea or an opinion can have has multiplied tenfold.

However everything has a flipside to it.

Disagreements with various decisions taken by governments has lead many countries namely China, Syria, Iran and not to mention North Korea (Their southern counterparts have taken the internet by storm recently, thanks to a rather peculiar dance) to ban social networking sites completely. China does have Weibo, a national equivalent of Twitter, which is strictly monitored by the government. Iran has banned Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, citing reasons that people would use such sites as a way to work around the strict press laws of the country. In countries such as these where the atmosphere is extremely volatile, Freedom of Speech is denied solely cause of the power it commands. Add the power of social media to it, and you have a time bomb on your hands.The London riots is another example of the misuse of social media.

Coming back to campaign, it must be noted that Obama didn’t change the face of political campaigns around the world using social media rather social media is itself what changed the face of politics. Its value is yet to be fully underlined and it’s potential, yet to be fully realized. However with whatever it is that we’ve seen, we can be sure that this isn’t even a quarter of the impact it could have on our lives in the near future.

This article was originally posted in Express Healthcare (The Indian Express Group) by our CEO, Rohan Chandrashekhar. Click here to read the original post.

With social media having gone mainstream across the world, organisations – small and large, are not only looking for aggressive ownership in this new media pie, but also working out unique ways of keeping their constituents informed and engaged across multiple channels that predominantly include Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube, Tumblr, and Flickr. The premise obviously being that the world is shifting to a new form of communication and interaction, and people (in this case, patients) are in need of simple yet transparent ways of learning and sharing information. Amidst tight regulations and fears of massive PR backlash, some of the best hospitals in the US are unabashedly embracing social media in their marketing mix to achieve actionable goals this year. As Marc Needham, Director of Web Technology for Scripps Health says, “Try new things, be nice to people and don’t say anything that your legal department would object to.” Ambitious leadership teams realise that with a robust infrastructure in social media strategy and a deep understanding of tangible objectives, not only can social media be adopted as a catalyst for sharing meaningful information, physician-patient collaboration, training medical personnel, gathering visitor feedback, boosting CSR initiatives, recruiting top-quality staff and so forth, but also as a dominant driver in building new/existing relationships by educating and informing patients about new discoveries, communicating wait times before patients get to the hospital, responding to and preparing for emergencies, reducing patient anxiety by offering a preview of what to expect when they arrive, and sharing timely health/safety tips for the holidays among many others.

Image Courtesy: mariachily, Flickr

Consider the classic case of Henry Ford Hospital, regarded as the No.1 hospital on Twitter by Ed Bennett who manages web operations at the University of Maryland Medical Center and sits on the Advisory Board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Health Care Social Media. Surgeons at Henry Ford live-tweeted through an entire surgery, giving short real-time updates about a procedure involving the removal of a cancerous tumour from a patient’s kidney. The impetus for their Twittering was to let their audience know that a tumour can be removed without taking out the entire kidney. This ended up being an exercise in bold and transparent communication for the hospital, making people feel more connected and engaged with them.

Another case where Twitter helped to prevent a possible PR nightmare was that of Greater Baltimore Medical Center where a Baltimore television station incorrectly reported that security at the hospital had been breached by an armed robber. Following this outbreak, had it not been for their media relations manager who sent out a flurry of tweets correcting the misinformation, patients would have falsely assumed that the hospital had below-par security and safety standards. On a platform where critical news spreads like wildfire, responding at breakneck speed with accurate information saved the day by preventing an unverified rumour aimed at tarnishing the brand’s image.

Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital (commonly referred to as ‘MGH’) is an organisation to learn from. Widely considered among the most prestigious medical institutions in the world, MGH has heavily invested in its online properties which include the corporate website, 10 Facebook pages, eight Twitter accounts, three Youtube channels, one Foursquare page and a LinkedIn company page. The coveted hospital does not stop here though. They focus on building a sense of community around these social networks, running contests frequently and connecting with their fans on Facebook and Twitter (even on nights and weekends), for instance the “#tweetforacure” campaign led by MGH’s Cancer Center where $1 went to cancer research for every tweet carrying that hashtag. They also have a reason to stand out in the sea of applications available in the Apple iStore with an iPhone application that is designed to help people find the closest emergency room anywhere in the US. These initiatives ensure that patient engagement and satisfaction always remain on top of the institution’s checklist.

Among major national medical centers, Cleveland Clinic ranks behind Mayo Clinic (which has its own social media network) and Johns Hopkins Medical Center in awareness. To bring a lot of new patients into their fraternity, they have structured a cross-functional team that enables education, collaboration, and smart governance. The hospital, which manages a global following (patients come from over 100 countries) uses Facebook, Twitter and Youtube in a major way, not just to share real-life stories, ground-breaking research and news that are rich in content but also to connect its 2,800 full-time staff of physicians and researchers with the masses. The corporate website offers virtual tours of the hospital’s campus and opportunities to meet the physicians. Their healthcare content draws 2.2 million visitors a month, making them one of the most trafficked hospital websites in the country. In addition, they also run the Cleveland Clinic Online Health Chats, two online channels dedicated to providing consumers with professional-grade healthcare information. One chat is devoted to connecting consumers live, with nurses. The other is a resource for people—not necessarily Cleveland Clinic patients—to connect with a physician regarding a given healthcare topic. The chats allow people to ask questions anonymously, gain information from a trusted source, and access archived conversations from a central place. To manage their vast and highly diverse social media programmes, Cleveland Clinic employs a core digital team of more than 15 people, with over 200 approved users across the clinic who are free to add content daily, based on appropriate guidelines, making it the ‘content king of the healthcare industry’. The hospital also offers Android and iPad apps for managing stress, sleep, exercise and healthful eating, all in efforts to deliver a truly cohesive and complete experience to patients.

Another area where social media really shines is ‘fund raising’. UCSF Medical Center launched a fundraising competition titled “Challenge for the Children” to raise money for the new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. The eight-week competition was designed in collaboration with online fundraising platform Causes.com to reach out through Facebook and Twitter and encourage people to contribute as individuals or become team leaders in support of the children’s hospital. The campaign’s success (raised over $1 million) was also attributed to Farmville – a popular Facebook game developed by Zynga, which released “Candy Cane crops” into the game as part of the fundraiser, allowing 100 per cent of the proceeds from the sale of the crops to be donated directly to the hospital. To extend this example is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the world’s premier centres for the research and treatment of paediatric cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases.

GRAMMY award-winning artist Sheryl Crow and other popular musicians including Stone Temple Pilots and Kings of Leon showed their support by trailblazing a music campaign called “Music Gives to St. Jude Kids” and partnering with web-based concert ticket sites Ticketmaster and Livenation that provided people with an add-on donation to the hospital. Another social media campaign titled “50K to Cancer” was launched based around dedicating $1 to cancer research for every Twitter follower gained during the drive, allowing for all 21,800 new followers to then vote on which cancer research organisation would receive the funding. St. Jude won the drive enlisting the support of social media heavyweights, celebrities, athletes and other research organisations with large followings of their own, who helped propel the drive along the way. These efforts show that the hospital is committed to providing not only patients, but also family and loved ones with the highest levels of treatment and care.

“Though respectable hospital chains in India have forayed into social media, we are yet to see notable strides being taken in this part of the world. While there remains no doubt that social media cannot be ignored anymore, merely having a few thousand fans on Facebook or Twitter and occasionally publishing a friendly status update does not deliver on the social media promise” explains Dr M Chandrashekhar, an independent healthcare consultant and advisor to BUZZVALVE’s healthcare clients.

One of the dominant reasons why hospitals in India are not seeing substantial results in social media is because it is being exploited by PR teams as a unidirectional medium to enforce brand messages on receptive audiences.

Another reason is the closed investment being made into it. While digital marketing budgets among their US/UK counterparts usually range from tens of thousands to millions of dollars, hospital administrators are hardly devoting a fraction of that into their online properties. Investing in the right people is also a continually nagging challenge.

Other prominent challenges include resistance from internal culture, measuring ROI, lack of talented resources, and frequent changes in business demands.

So what does it take to overcome these challenges and take control? At the very least, hospitals need an in-house ‘Corporate Social Strategist’ — a business decision maker for social media programmes who provides leadership, roadmap definition, and governance; and directly influences the spending on technology vendors and service agencies. They also need to hire a competent agency that specialises in executing and providing accountability to social media initiatives alongside helping the social strategist build the hospital’s internal infrastructure and social footprint. It essentially requires a highly-collaborative work culture that is willing to forge the mechanics of social media into the fabric of everyday operations to become a Healthcare 2.0 “juggernaut”. An in-depth look at some of the core elements of a well structured social media programme followed by leading hospitals in the US can shed light into what Indian hospitals could be doing wrong, and address some important questions.

To make a practical case for a substantial buy-in, here are several reasons for super-speciality hospitals to adopt (and if they have already adopted, then lead) social media in 2012. It is better to start now than later. To add some perspective, there are over 1,300 hospitals in the US that have an active social presence. That is a substantial number, with many of them executing differentiated programmes and generating tangible results.

Secondly, patients are online in huge numbers, furiously searching for medical information or seeking answers to pertinent health/wellness-related questions. A recent study shows that 80 per cent of those diagnosed with a disease search the Internet first for information.

Consequently, there are not many Indian sources (i.e. physicians) who can answer these questions where or when they are asked. Thirdly, according to a report by YouGov Healthcare – a professional research and consulting organisation, 57 per cent of consumers said that a social media connection with a hospital was likely to have a strong impact on their decision to seek treatment at that hospital, and 81 per cent of them believe that if a hospital has a strong social media presence, they are likely to be more cutting edge, creating a halo effect across clinical functions. “Social media gives hospitals an opportunity to find new, shareable ways to present information and allows them the opportunity to develop a voice and set themselves apart from their competitors”, adds Dr Chandrashekhar.

The big news this year for healthcare service providers will be that social media marketing finally gets taken seriously to stand a chance against mounting competition. Hospital leadership will approach social media with more realistic expectations and accept that their brands can’t be social without delivering valuable, relevant content and engaging people across multiple social networks. Decision makers will also make better choices with in-house and agency hires considering their need to be highly differentiated in the market and execute in compliance with regulations. Social media campaigns will not be executed in isolation, but as part of an integrated communication strategy, with attainable goals and processes in place to track their return on investment.

An edited version of this article was originally posted in The Wall Street Journal – India Real Time by our CEO, Rohan Chandrashekhar. Click here to read the original post.

Social media is evolving at breakneck speed. So much so that even savvy political candidates and parties across developed economies have adopted it to push for campaign success. As we see the 2012 assembly elections in India inching closer, more and more political outfits are leveraging this fast-growing medium to connect with the masses. While the Congress and Samajwadi Party are using social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter to interact with their supporters, and even YouTube to post live speeches, the BJP is using Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) to reach their audiences. But are they doing enough? Have they been able to convert friendly netizens into passionate advocates? More importantly, how have they influenced the online gentry to vote in their favour? Our study tell us that they are far from using social media to its fullest potential, and that ‘internet penetration’ is not to blame for the lack of motive towards voting as demonstrated by more affluent (aka. internet savvy) audiences. According to a report jointly prepared by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), India saw over 120 million internet connections in 2011, nearly 13 million broadband connections and roughly 900 million mobile connections. Still, these are big numbers though nowhere close to developed countries like Japan or South Korea. Whether opinionated citizens and nationalistic zealots can be rallied using the persuasive powers of the social web remains to be seen.

Image Courtesy: Theresa Thompson, Flickr

Consider the U.S. Presidential Campaign of 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency in a landslide victory. A dominant reason for that success was attributed to his team’s well-structured and expansive digital outreach, which in essence involved transforming everyday people into empowered supporters and proud donors by effectively utilising social networks, campaign microsites, engagement advertising, email advocacy, text messaging and online video in their communication mix.

Since then, the social media landscape has grown by leaps and bounds, with politicos now open to experimenting with new applications like Path, Pinterest, MixCloud, and Instagram and collaborating with specialist social media agencies on digital initiatives that can allow users to ask/answer questions, or vote on things that interest them, giving organisations the chance to engage users across multiple devices, aggregate feedback and gather voter insight. An example of this is NASA’s Martian TownHall Polling Place. A somewhat similar exercise was organised on July 06, 2011 by Twitter called “TownHall@TheWhiteHouse” which captured all tweets with the hashtag #askobama and queued them up by importance for the U.S. President to answer in real-time. GOOD Maker is one such application that works towards nurturing evangelists and advocates as opposed to general audiences — provides an environment where users are allowed to submit ideas and plans to meet a given challenge (say, created by the political party) which then get voted on by other users of the community based on the idea they believe meets the challenge best.

Search behemoth Google is not far behind either. Google+, their rapidly growing social network includes features like Hangouts, Circles and Sparks which ring a lot of promise for politicians. Hangouts is an easy-to-use high-quality group video chat for up to 10 people, and as Gautam Gandhi (Head of New Business Development, Google India) helps to explain, is an incredible way to engage people that is much more personal than Twitter, Facebook or any other medium. With their new API now open to the public, politicos can look to derive significant value out of the offering. Seeing its users consume political content like never before, Google even launched a “command centre” aptly named ‘Politics & Elections’ to meet growing demand, which essentially aggregates political news trends and audience reading patterns. Gandhi adds that the command centre fits in natively with their company’s mission of organising the world’s information.

Consequently, the importance of having an independent social network cannot be understated. While political parties in India largely depend on raising funds through donations from individuals and corporates, investing heavily in 3rd party social networks like Facebook and Twitter by way of purchasing ads is not feasible in the long-run. Moreover, mainstream political parties tend to place their focus on the same set of core issues year-on-year although presenting different ways of addressing them every time. For this reason, it makes strategic sense to invest in a social network that is built from the ground-up to specifically cater to the needs of such parties — a network that is layered on the very fabric of the party’s mission, vision and values reflecting their viewpoints and position on topics of national interest. The quintessential Indian netizen could do with an interesting social network like Votizen — an open platform that empowers people to take action directly with the people in their networks, based around the notion that the first thing people would do is connect with the voters that they already are connected to in their social networks, reach out to them, and ask them to take an action on behalf of a favoured candidate because they believe it’s important.

A closer look into how politicos in other countries have executed in mainstream digital media sheds light on some important facts. The most significant channels for engagement during a campaign include the website, email, mobile, social networks, and ads. Indian political outfits and candidates can do a lot more on these channels merely by increasing their share of investments here as opposed to traditional media. For instance, political campaigns could consider providing opportunities for engagement on the website through highly-creative design, powerful messaging and sophisticated interactive elements. Emails have to be ‘social by design’, while sharing campaign updates, upcoming event schedules, rich media and fundraising appeals. Mobile devices can feature campaign-focused apps that can coax people to share their opinions (offering their cell-phone numbers in the process) and act as a conduit to micro-targeted (i.e. highly relevant) text messages. Designing for a single social media channel which can be auto-optimized for distribution universally is imperative to delivering a seamless and cohesive experience. Well-crafted engagement ads leave users excited about what they have seen and motivated to share that information with their community.

Image Courtesy: David Armano, Flickr

The first step for political organisations to take is to re-organise their internal functions in a ‘multiple hub-and-spoke’ (aka. dandelion) formation, where all cross-functional digital teams derive resources from a centralised section. This is absolutely essential if they want to evolve to responding to their audiences’ growing needs and expectations. Admittedly, the current state of affairs (de-centralised, as it is) demands more to be done in this space.

Albeit, the fundamental rules of convincing and converting remain the same. Sharing ideas, goals, milestones and ‘behind the scenes’ activity are likely to get a lot of organic distribution since people by nature are curious about actions commonly distanced from the public’s vantage point. Direct and personal interaction with the masses can go a long way in cementing fluid relationships. It can be overwhelming, and sometimes even overpowering, but a disciplined engagement routine needs to be enforced in order to respond on a day-to-day basis. Finally, mobilizing this digital following into grassroots-level action stands as the most crucial step. Politicos need to be able to talk about relationships and not issues to see success at monetizing virtual ‘likes’ to real-world votes. This emotional connect around relationships has the potential to drive massive foot-falls at public gatherings and campaign-focused events, which can be tapped by coupling immersive location-based marketing programs with niche gamification ingenuity.

We cannot completely negate the possibility of seeing a rare breed of politicians emerge over the next general elections. Those who place dynamic digital initiatives, like the ones covered in this article, at the helm of their campaign’s agenda. What can be said for certain about those who appear to embrace such initiatives, is that netizens voting in favour is perhaps a thing to look forward to.

]]> http://buzzvalve.com/blog/politics-2-0-using-social-media-to-win-votes-and-empower-supporters-in-india/feed/ 0 http://buzzvalve.com/blog/10-social-media-challenges-in-a-brand-agency-relationship/ http://buzzvalve.com/blog/10-social-media-challenges-in-a-brand-agency-relationship/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:12:09 +0000 BUZZVALVE http://buzzvalve.com/?p=662

This article was originally posted in Exchange4Media.com by our CEO, Rohan Chandrashekhar. Click here to read the original post.

According to an October 2011 study by Burson-Marsteller, the number of brands across Asia-Pacific having a presence in social media have mushroomed to a staggering figure. While brands are comfortable betting on proven ways of reaching out to their audiences on these networks, agencies on the other hand are continually re-inventing themselves to offer a diversified and adaptive portfolio of services to accommodate fast-emerging needs.

Image Courtesy: jelloneck, Flickr

However, there are intricate operational challenges involved that often go completely unaddressed, which are undeniably leading to tight bottlenecks in a brand-agency relationship. There is a growing need for senior marketers at large organizations, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, to identify and address these business-critical issues considering their counterparts in developed markets like the U.S. and U.K. have adopted creative and strategic solutions, streamlining their efforts and investment in social media.

With that, let us take a look at these challenges spanning from ‘conception’ to ‘commerce’:

1. Conception & Strategy: This is the most significant aspect in a relationship, and one that is also the most challenging to handle. A noticeable faux-pas in the market today is the importance given to blitzkrieg campaigns as opposed to becoming a social-media juggernaut. Which is to say that long-term programs deeply focused at understanding, attaining, and retaining customers, while growing the brand’s social media technology and talent infrastructure must be a significant part of the engagement plan. Another challenge is with brands who have multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts. Marketers have some tough questions to answer: Will those accounts be aligned by product, region, or brand? Who secures or changes all the passwords every time a brand manager departs the organization? And what unique experiences can agencies bring to brands, beyond the simple status update or static landing tab? Smart strategies demand extensive brainstorming and mind-mapping between the brand and agency on differentiated ideas and actionable outcomes.
2. Content Creation: Consistently creating great-quality and share-worthy content for social media is an emerging challenge. Top on the list for agencies as well as brands should be hiring a great Community Manager who can serve as an honest representative of their organization, can multi-task under mounting pressure, can clear the air by taking big risks, and finally, can convince and convert  — essential to creating content that is assertive on participation and sharing. The most obvious hiccup is adopting a genuine “brand voice” where responses to customers across social media networks are involved. In the short-term, it is safe for agencies to only talk ‘about’ the brand, and not ‘like’ the brand. However, nothing a brand presents to consumers should go out without first being touched by their representative. Another challenge is to create meaningful content that can attract paying customers, corporate partners, and non-profits to “owned media” channels. A step towards achieving this is to map the brand’s interests and campaign goals against a set of calibrated sources, and allow only the most relevant content from these sources to filter through. The most important thing to remember is that content favoured by evangelists and advocates does not come through ‘hit & trial’ techniques, but through communicating (privately & publicly) with fans/followers, monitoring competitor updates, harvesting content from well-curated resources, and styling content with the brand’s personality. Once created, the significance of broadcasting this content to the right audience (by interest, region or language preferences), at the right time, should not be under-estimated.
3. Time-To-Market: A key factor leading to successful brand-agency relationships is managing dynamic programs efficiently, and under tight deadlines. Brands require agencies to launch, edit, and update web applications/games across their social portfolio quickly and effortlessly. To keep overall outreach activities fresh and interesting, an array of consumer promotion and engagement apps (ex: photo/video contests, sweepstakes, interactive quizzes/polls, and so forth) need to be deployed continually across social media and other media properties including the corporate website, campaign microsites, and smartphones/tablets. Agencies and brands should therefore consider weighing in on cost-effective and time-conscious alternatives (i.e. plug-&-play) instead of developing applications from scratch, unless absolutely essential. In the social media business, two major impediments to launching within set deadlines are inexperienced digital teams who simply lack the required capabilities in-house, and slow decision-making that could stem from being averse to making bets in this space.
4. Mainline Communication: With larger audiences, come larger responsibilities. And communication is poised at the heart of it. To stay on top of things, innovate-at-scale, and iterate rapidly, it is essential for agencies and brands to have a non-deterring, 2-way channel open for dialogue. Essentially during an ongoing engagement, it becomes imperative for teams on either side to understand why certain campaigns need to be executed under tight deadlines, why certain programs are canned even after months of planning, or why budgets are slashed to a fraction sometimes without prior notice. It is not uncommon to see agencies slack out on ‘client leadership’ because of these reasons, as much as it is to see brands leave agencies because of lethargic conduct, below-par performance, or even improper attitude — all rooted around the lack (broken, complete absence or misinterpretation) of communication. To lead communication, a regimental task-management routine needs to be laid down and teams on both sides need to be provided with ‘near real-time’ feedback on performance — where brands provide inputs to agencies benchmarked on flawless execution, and agencies to brands on swift assistance.
5. Engagement & Interaction: Popular brands are exposed to a lot of conversation around them on the social web. The trick is to keep the conversation going in their favour. In many cases, the brand’s interaction with consumers is a one-way highway with updates of all kinds passing through and no clear direction or purpose. High-caliber agencies and brands ensure that interaction with consumers serve a definitive purpose. How can it help to improve a product/service? What insights can be gathered before entering a new market? How to reach the best talent pool? Also, certain processes need to be put in place to take action every time there is a user-generated comment so they can be addressed quickly, efficiently, and transparently. The thing to remember here is that managing an active community is a full-time job, and pro-activeness is of the essence to scale towards larger social business programs and in fact prevent it from turning into a “help desk” station or worse, a reactive community.
6. Moderation & Workflow: Firstly, any conversation around a brand — good or bad, is great! With the exception of ‘trolling’, it shows that people are interested in the brand and looking to engage with a fellow human at the other end, one way or the other. Because they are public, social media channels demand greater levels of customer service and faster response times. Brands and agencies need to put robust moderation processes in place that can swiftly track negative sentiments around the brand, eliminate any inappropriate/profane language that fans may use, identify competitor mentions, and flag questions that need to be addressed urgently. As social media programs scale, more internal departments will need to be involved in responding to escalated concerns. A collaborative workflow makes it easy to direct specific communication to the right member within the right department, ensuring that fans receive an internally-vetted, correctly formatted and comprehensive answer in a few hours, if not minutes. An added benefit to having a good workflow system within the organization is that many more managers get to see the results of the brand’s social media marketing efforts, overcoming any cultural resistance/skepticism and defensiveness in investing more resources into social media.
7. Centralized Control & Localization: As mentioned earlier, not only is involving multiple teams in the conversation a good idea, but providing them with direct outreach roles and privileges is an absolute game-changer in productivity and efficiency within the organization and across their agency partners. Keeping centralized control over organizing and managing people, processes and activity across brands, campaigns, accounts and teams also prevents the brand’s “owned media” properties from being misused by disgruntled employees or falling prey to rogue messages (i.e. factually incorrect information that could hurt the brand). The value add that brands get by defining permissions on an individual level, creating permission groups to give multiple individuals administrative access, and regulating exactly what each individual can and cannot do when managing conversations representing the brand on these owned media channels, is conclusively unparalleled. While brands and agencies are trying to woo consumers with national and global campaigns, targeting local markets add authenticity and transparency to these initiatives. Furthermore, allowing local agents, representatives, or store employees the authority to grow revenue and cement direct relationships through social media is a big leap towards becoming a “Social Enterprise”. Instead of each local store having a social presence of their own, brand managers and franchisors should be able to manage the outreach of hundreds of locations, drill down to any level of their hierarchy and post to clusters of stores, making regional promotions/events seamless and cohesive.
8. Regulations & Compliances: The first step is to create a comprehensive although upbeat social media policy for employees to follow, which serves as the first (and the most basic) line of protection against breach of industry compliance. Large brands, especially in the aviation, energy, finance, auto, and healthcare sectors have a myriad of regulations that they need to adhere to. As a result, managing the brand’s data and compliance requirements with secure archiving and warehousing procedures becomes mandatory. Many agencies fail to advise or provide any cover fearing a more sanitized corporate approach to conversations, or because they simply lack the know-how. However, providing such a safeguard system with full accountability measures and audit trails can greatly reduce chances of severe misuse of corporate social media accounts, and open highly-regulated brands to explore social media more comfortably.
9. Return-on-Investment & Social Footprint: It is perfectly fair for brands to expect quantifiable results having invested quality time and resources into social media. Metrics like deployment time, response time, advocacy (i.e. share of voice), conversion rate, depth of engagement, revenue per share, visitors per share, and so forth offer tangible insights for brands to build their social footprint. It is not as critical to know how a brand got to a million fans, as it is to know what the brand can get their fans to do, or better still, what they do for the brand by themselves. Bottom line — agencies and brands need to stop building on intangible assets. Which is to say that though intangible assets (for example, number of Facebook fans) are important, they in isolation do not warrant investment in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which tangible assets do. In contrast, a tangible asset could be knowing if a fan’s comment on the brand’s status update has encouraged his/her friends to participate as well (if yes, then how many?), or whether it has led a fan to request for more information, consequently making an attributed purchase over it. Building a multi-channel social footprint is invaluable for the brand in the long run. Instead, what is happening is that brands and agencies fail to make use of any/all the support and feedback their previous campaigns would have gathered offline and across traditional & new media. To be able to make a lasting impact on consumers, “connecting the dots” is very important and is an exhaustive exercise in data tracking and reporting.
10. Differentiation & Longevity: Some agencies are really good at developing rock-solid applications meant for waterfall engagement, while others are experts in executing large-scale social media campaigns. There are very few agencies who offer a potent mix of capabilities, and the market begs more consolidation for that reason. As a result, brands are left to manage multiple agencies in the roster and the implications that come along. A major implication is the disjointed messaging in cross-channel campaigns, which fails at providing a cohesive experience to consumers. There is also the million-dollar question around fees. Some high-end agencies have a well-structured fee regime and enforce world-class technologies led by top-notch talent, while there are other more run-of-the-mill shops offering services for mere thousands. Brands need to firmly understand the purpose behind hiring a social media agency and the scope of responsibilities to be shared with them alongside other digital agencies in their roster, which can be vast and tend to get stretched during execution. The third challenge has to do with longevity (aka. “sticky-ness”). With most deal terms in India ranging between 3 to 6 months for standard social media engagements, the brand’s social media infrastructure is diluted every time the reigns are passed on from agency to agency. The solution, as derived from a March 2010 report by Forrester Research is to hire a competent agency that can not just evolve with the changing needs of the brand, but continually execute as an agile artist.

With that, we have tried to cover some of the emerging challenges between brands and agencies in social media. Towards mid-2012, we could see some brands that have shown signs of formulating in social media, to take the first few steps in addressing these challenges more aggressively along with their agencies.

It’s not about the money, according to this McKinsey Quarterly article on “Motivating people: Getting beyond money”. Research shows that employees consider a praise from their manager as an equally (if not more) effective motivator than a cash bonus. Done publicly, recognition also has the benefit of inspiring imitation: when other employees see it, they frequently follow suit.

Image Courtesy: kerolic, Flickr

While large organizations are moving well beyond Social Media into Social Business allowing for highly-effective team collaboration, communication and insight sharing — managing employee performance and providing feedback is still downplayed by most managers and HR leaders in the enterprise today. This lethargic, low-performing culture contributes to why highly-talented employees are leaving for vibrant, results-driven companies that can value their contribution, keep them enthused, and allow them to reach their full potential. Most managers dislike giving feedback and don’t believe it to be as effective as they would like. Employees, on the other hand, like to be provided with real-time feedback and coaching from their supervisors as well as co-workers. So then, how do you counter this disconnect? Organizations like Facebook, Mozilla, and Rackspace are consistently striving to be the most-satisfying places to work at. By employing effective managers who passionately believe in continuous feedback, recognition and goal-setting, these companies are building a more collaborative and flexible culture to retain the best talent and keep them happy.

Why wait a whole year to tell your employees that they have done a great job, or that they need improvement in an area, or where they should focus their efforts? A major reason why the entire process of managing employee performance and providing feedback has been in need of a make-over for some time. Managers and HR leaders need to adopt modern ways of providing employees with more focused, real-time developmental feedback; improve communication and create more transparency so everyone knows the right goals to focus on; celebrate success more frequently and not wait months until review time to show appreciation; give employees a way to take control of their own performance and career development; and finally, create processes that are not rigid, complex or time consuming while making it easy for managers to engage with and coach their employees.

In order to take people to the next level and to encourage disruptive efficiency, organizations need to adopt Social Business technologies that are built from the ground up with “human-interaction” and “company culture” at the core; are simple, intuitive, and fun to use on a regular basis; and which make the process of managing employee performance and providing feedback more social, more natural, and more relevant to business leaders, HR professionals, managers, and individual employees. The first step is to gather exactly what challenges you have been facing, and how you have been addressing them so far. The next step is to define what you would like to achieve and within what time-frame. Once you have this information, it is best to approach a specialist digital agency with a proven track record of building a Social Enterprise — someone who has an understanding of why social interactions between people are essential in getting the best out of them, and an awareness of how modern performance-management strategies can be seamlessly integrated with existing talent infrastructure at the enterprise, as opposed to a recruitment agency who are likely to suggest a disconnected approach involving legacy (talent management) software that reflect a more traditional mindset and do not address the problems of a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Finally, focus on being or hiring a good manager for your team(s). Stress on business-critical outcomes based on clear goals, and guilt-free communication between coworkers based on your company culture. And, don’t forget to spend time in mentoring your employees during each feedback cycle, and stay assured that your star talent will not walk out the door.

An edited version of this article was originally posted in The Wall Street Journal – India Real Time by our CEO, Rohan Chandrashekhar. Click here to read the original post.

It is common knowledge that bootstrapped startups have very little money to spend, and absolutely none to needlessly burn. Paying employees, office rent & utilities constitute the largest chunk in expenditure for a service-based startup. If you are interesting in starting a business or currently running one, you should consider reading further.

For enterprise as well as startup teams, delivering world-class quality to customers and keeping internal processes well-managed is expected, albeit a lot to get done.

There are a plethora of cloud-based, small business applications out there for various business-critical functions, but which ones are the best, and suited to the Indian market? This article will attempt to explore some of these questions. These applications are accessible from virtually anywhere (with an active internet connection), cost little or nothing to use, and come without any contracts or commitments (unless specified otherwise). Also, it should be noted that though these applications are company ‘vertical’ & ‘size’ agnostic, they are consistently used by several successful startups as well as publicly-traded companies in the technology, digital media, & professional services industries having between 1 to 100,000+ employee(s). 

Let us take a closer look at these applications.

1. Email: This is a no-brainer! If you are a startup or small business that is still on your web host’s “Jurassic-era” email service, you have got to shift to Google Apps — completely hosted & maintained by none other than global search giant, Google. Think Gmail, only customized to your company. The free version offers 7GB of storage per user account, 10 user accounts, and access to Google’s Messaging & Collaboration Apps including Gmail, Calendar, Sites, Docs, and more. There is a paid version as well (US$5 per user per month) should your company require it. Titled ‘Google Apps for Business’, it essentially offers 25GB of storage per user account and the ability to create unlimited user accounts.

2. Web Hosting: Not an application in the general sense of the word, but an important function regardless. Nascent startup companies typically go with a web host like GoDaddy or HostGator. These hosts provide a reliable, scalable, and low-cost solution for most startups looking to launch a lightweight website. For a medium-sized budget, Network Solutions or Media Temple can be considered, who offer an elegant, simple interface and deliver a better control-panel experience. For more demanding requirements as expressed on rich-media websites, ecommerce websites, web applications, Software-as-a-Service websites and so forth, it is recommended to go with either Rackspace Cloud or Amazon AWS. Alongside offering storage space for hosting a website, some hosts provide an option of purchasing a domain address at little or no cost. It should be noted that web hosting gets more cost-effective as the purchase commitment gets longer. Be prepared & stay confident in committing to one service for at least 2 years when signing-up. Hosting a small website on GoDaddy costs less than US$6 per month. Media Temple can cost between US$20-50 per month. Rackspace costs upward of US$149 per month. However, Amazon offers hosting completely free for the 1st year, under their EC2 offering.

3. Analytics: If you require insights into how your website is performing, identifying traffic sources, auditing transaction trails, and tracking sales & conversions, you need a ‘web analytics’ solution. Like every other Google product, Google Analytics is completely free to use and offers enterprise-class web analytics to users. Other than Google’s renowned infrastructure & reliability, the application comes with an exhaustive set of features that are more than sufficient for a startup in any conceivable industry. However, there are some downsides to this. Expect to spend a few weeks in learning the application if you want to maximize its potential or hire an analytics consultant to help you analyze racks of actionable data and generate meaningful reports. There is also a concern about procuring “real-time” analytical data. Unfortunately, Google Analytics displays new data only after 24-hours. Companies looking to monitor the launch of a new product, contest, or discount/offer may need to look elsewhere. KISSmetrics and Mixpanel are two analytics applications that offer many of the features Google Analytics does, but with a better design (and clutter-free) experience, almost no learning curve or need to source an external consultant, and access to real-time data. Both have a healthy list of clients, which include familiar startups as well as large and established companies. A basic KISSmetrics subscription plan starts at US$29 per month after a 30-day free trial. Mixpanel is free up to 200,000 data points (with an affiliate badge on your website) which is sufficient for tracking a small website for a few months, after which their subscription plan starts at US$150 per month.

4. Phone System: If you have international customers & associates who are likely to want to speak with you and your team frequently, it is essential that you seek a Virtual Phone System like Skype or Grasshopper to keep phone bills at a minimum, stay connected with your clients, and collaborate with your internal/distributed teams. Virtual Phone Systems (VPS) offer a local phone number in countries like the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Australia & others that anyone can call, which can then be received by you on your mobile or office phone in India. They do not require any additional hardware or software to use. Most VPS come with a handy set of features including auto receptionist, call forwarding, call conferencing, voicemail & fax via email, toll free numbers, and so forth. Skype for Business provides a local ‘Online Number’ in all of the countries mentioned above, and calls can be received by you on Skype (web or mobile application) or forwarded to your mobile or office phone. Alternatively, you can also make calls to other mobiles and office phones in/outside the country using this number. Unlimited calls to landlines in 40 countries using Skype come at a fixed fee of US$16.09 per month, plus a 3-month subscription for an Online Number at US$6 per month. Grasshopper starts at US$9.95 per month plus a US$25 activation fee, and includes 1 toll-free or local number.

5. Accounting & Billing: Keeping accounts organized & clean is extremely important for companies, and more so for startups. Get it right and your business could be a huge success. Get it wrong and it could spell disaster for your company. You don’t have to be a Chartered Accountant or hold an MBA in Finance to understand basics of personal & business accounting. Freshbooks (beginner), FreeAgent (beginner), or Xero (intermediate) can make it really easy for you to manage your finances in a secure, private, and central place. These applications help you to manage personal expenses, keep account books, create & send professional estimates & invoices in multiple currencies, collect payments, calculate taxes, build balance sheets, and so forth in a systematic way, all the while keeping you away from complicated jargon. Freshbooks & Xero offer a forever-free plan for invoicing a small number of customers & restricting access to a few account users. Invoicing more customers requires a subscription plan that starts at US$19.95 per month with Freshbooks, and US$19 per month with Xero. FreeAgent offers a 30-day free trial, after which you pay a fixed subscription fee of US$20 per month.

6. File Sharing, Storage, & Backup: Dropbox and Box are both great for individuals/teams looking to manage their content more intuitively — by keeping files/folders auto-synced online, on their desktops, as well as mobile devices, and sharing large files securely without the hassle of attaching them to emails. Both applications provide users with a seamless way to upload their personal and business data, and allow access to it from anywhere, as long as users have a valid internet connection. It works similarly to attaching files in an email, wherein once attached, they can be accessed from any system/device and shared with other people. Files within your Dropbox or Box account can be arranged into folders and trusted users invited to share your folder(s). Alternatively, you may choose to make everything private & accessible only by you. Security & stability is everything for a file-sharing and storage application — another reason why either Dropbox or Box should be a likely choice. Both companies have millions of users (Dropbox is intimately known in the startup ecosystem, and Box serves 77% of the Fortune 500), and have raised equally huge amounts in venture capital funding. A conceivable downside to using an online storage application is that backing large amounts of data into your account consumes a lot of time. Advantages are plenty — no hardware purchase (external HDD) required, no risk of data corruption/loss, no travel-safe gear required, no restriction on storage space, and no operating-system (OS) usage restriction. The free version of Dropbox allows users to store data up to 2GB, whereas Box allows up to 5GB. Users can also purchase additional storage space on Dropbox starting at US$9.99 per month for up to 50GB, and on Box starting at the same price for up to 25GB.

7. Customer Relationship Management: As startups turn into small companies, and small companies into medium-sized organizations, managing your customers effectively becomes a pressing need. You may want to consider increasing your sales staff and/or adopt a CRM solution to manage deals in the pipeline, follow up with leads on time, and monitor all customer-focused communication from one place. Two of the best applications in the market are Highrise by 37 Signals, and Sales Cloud by Salesforce. While Highrise is mostly preferred by startups & small businesses, Sales Cloud is more suited to medium-sized and large enterprises and is considered an industry standard. However, both products have a healthy combination of startup as well as enterprise clients. The only conceivable caveat with adopting a CRM solution is ‘migrating’ to another CRM solution provider — should you see the need at a later date. Pricing plans for Highrise start at US$25 per month which includes access for up to 6 users, 5GB of file storage, tracking of 10 deals, and capacity for 5,000 contacts. New accounts on Highrise come with a 30-day free trial period. Sales Cloud starts at US$2 per user, per month (only till November 30, 2011. US$5 per user, per month after this date) and requires an annual contract. The starting plan comes with a 7-day free trial period.

8. Project Management & Team Collaboration: Teams, small and large alike, are increasingly moving away from conventional email to online project collaboration applications like Basecamp, Asana, and Huddle that provide colleagues, clients, and vendors with a central, unified platform for assigning tasks, managing approval workflow, and swift access to all project-related documents. Basecamp is synonymous with project management among freelancers and the small-business community. It has an exhaustive and passionate user base, offers all the essential features of a good project management application, and includes access to unlimited users/clients on all pricing plans. However, Basecamp suffers from a clunky and lethargic user interface, which could be a weighing factor for those who love great design and a highly-responsive application. It comes with a free plan allowing you to manage 1 project with 10MB of file storage. Paid plans start at US$24 per month for 15 projects and 5GB of file storage. Asana is a new entrant, largely offers collaborative task management for teams, and is created by the co-founder of Facebook. It was made to be used by individuals and businesses alike. The key differentiators with Asana are that it is exceedingly simple to use, has a slick user interface, and is versatile, responsive and lightweight. But, because of its simplicity and the subtle way it blends project management with team collaboration, many users could perceive it as an application without the robust, enterprise-level functionality that the competition offers. Asana is completely free for individuals and teams with up to 30 members. Huddle is significantly used by 75% of the Fortune 500, and several government organizations. It offers almost all of the features desired in a market-leading project management application, including a built-in media viewer, web and phone conferencing module, and dedicated support. Following a 14-day free trial period, Huddle is available for purchase starting at US$150 per month for up to 10 users and 10GB of secure storage. Both Basecamp and Huddle offer customization to match your corporate branding, extensions to your own personal application, and integration with multiple 3rd-party web and mobile applications.

9. Note Taking: One of the major reasons why some creative ideas never get executed, some project iterations never get done, some client feedback never get addressed, and some joint-research work between colleagues get confusing, is because managers do not stop to take or share notes on-the-fly. Evernote and Springpad are two applications to change exactly that. Ideas and information can be quickly and easily saved as text notes, web clips, audio recordings, files, or images and accessed from any computer or mobile device with an internet connection. Users can categorize their notes by tags, share them with colleagues and clients, and set reminders for viewing them later. Both Evernote and Springpad are available for free. However, Evernote has a Premium version as well that is ad-free and offers bigger upload capacity alongside greater sharing options, with pricing for individuals at US$5 per month and for teams of 3 to 100+ users from US$2.50 – US$3.75 per user per month. Students, faculty, and non-profits receive a 50% discount on Evernote Premium.

10. Talent Acquisition and Management: Today, the biggest challenge for any startup or enterprise is hiring and retaining top-quality employees. If you are a hiring manager suffering from application overload/underload, low-quality prospects, ineffective sources, complicated HR recruiting software, or expensive staffing agencies — it’s time for you to consider a simple, cost-effective and efficient alternative that can manage the entire gamut of talent acquisition on the cloud: sourcing prospects, tracking applicants, employee referrals, job board syndication, social media promotion, evaluating candidates, collaborative hiring, and so forth. The Resumator and MeshHire are both highly-capable online recruiting applications favoured by nascent startups and publicly-traded companies alike. Where MeshHire shines in serving Fortune-500 organizations like Google, Microsoft, and Xerox — The Resumator follows alongside serving high-profile startups like Mashable, Tumblr, and Klout. However, pricing plans for both applications remain more-or-less similar. The Resumator starts at US$49 per month providing 2 open jobs at a time, unlimited user accounts and resume storage space, and comes with a 14-day free trial on all plans. MeshHire starts with a free plan providing 1 open job, 500 job applicants, and 250MB of resume storage space, following which paid plans start at US$49 per month.

Now that we have covered this thriving ecosystem of technology applications that sustain the growing need of young entrepreneurs and experienced business managers at small as well as large organizations to help them run their businesses more responsibly & efficiently, I would be happy to hear from you about how some of these applications have impacted your company, or have there been other applications, ones not mentioned in this article, that you have been using to push for business success? Please leave your comments below.

]]> http://buzzvalve.com/blog/10-game-changing-apps-for-startup-enterprise-businesses/feed/ 0 http://buzzvalve.com/blog/the-social-war-is-on-and-it-will-disrupt-the-search-paradigm/ http://buzzvalve.com/blog/the-social-war-is-on-and-it-will-disrupt-the-search-paradigm/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:32:18 +0000 BUZZVALVE http://buzzvalve.com/?p=341

In our previous blog post, we analyzed how the Cold War between Google and Facebook could redefine ‘Search’ in the future. Our discussion mainly revolved around how the two broad categories of user data: Static and Dynamic upon convergence could alter the way a search result is arrived at. In this blog discussion, we will delve deeper into analyzing the factors that could change the search paradigm altogether.

With the ever expanding social media space, new dynamics have gained prominence in driving user choices and desires. The challenge for the Search business lies in responding to such user considerations in arriving at results. The idea of ‘Search’ taking a critical turn in the future is inevitable. We propose 4 parameters that future ‘Search’ strategies and algorithms must take into account: 1) Informational Relevancy, 2) Social Relevancy, 3) Locational Relevancy and 4) Personality Relevancy.

Informational Relevancy

Informational Relevancy mainly concerns the relevancy of informational content with that of the search phrase or keywords entered. The present day search paradigm more or less functions on this very principle. The algorithms that exist today are complex, but the basic idea remains the same: ranking links on the basis of rich and relevant content corresponding to keywords entered. This approach is and will remain one of the fundamental pillars of the future Search paradigm, constituting the initial filtering process.

Social Relevancy

This search parameter could form the principal factor in driving search results in the future. The Web today is a galaxy of information. An information overload of this kind is often not helpful to meet search objectives from a user’s perspective. Social interaction data could act as an effective filter for search engines of the future. Dynamic data in the form of Facebook “likes”, comments, status updates, Twitter Retweets etc. are a great source of extrapolating user personality and thought process. This data could be used by search engines while extracting search results from the Web. For instance, if in the recent past, a user “liked” content related to Honda and retweets that talked well of Honda products, a search by that user for “best buy cars” or “best hatchbacks” could first get populated by results with links to Honda cars, leaving other market leaders behind. Honda links could feature right on top on the basis of Social Relevance.

Another avenue that search engines could tap into while executing the search process is sifting through the preferences of ‘top influencers’ of the concerned user. For instance, if a person is heavily influenced by a person on Twitter (the influence metric can be gauged by analyzing user replies to his/her influencer on Twitter, tweets of the influencer retweeted by the user, comments on the influencer’s Facebook wall etc.), the likes and dislikes of the influencer regarding a topic or a product could form an important dynamic in the search result.

Let’s say X is influenced by Y on social media. Y considers the bakery shop “Nick Bakers” the best in town. This is often reflected in his/her tweets, status updates etc. Now if X were to search for “good bakery shops”, “Nick Bakers” could figure among the top search results.

Similarly, Y’s own search history and links pursued with respect to a certain ‘topic’ could be used, should X were to search on a similar ‘topic’ in the future. Y’s thumbs up to the website of the National Library for information related to Egyptian History could result in National Library featuring among the top results if X too were to search for ‘Egyptian history’.

Locational Relevancy

Search could also expand its tentacles to areas of ‘locational relevancy’. Locational aspects are of two types: One, based entirely on the geographical co-ordinates of the user. This would mean the search algorithm would take into consideration not only the aspects of informational and social relevancy but also the ‘nearness’ factor with respect to the user’s current location. This aspect may not necessarily come into play at all times, but could be incorporated whenever appropriate. For instance, taking the example of ‘Egyptian history’ forward, if the search result were to return the ‘National Library’ and also the ‘Historical Institute’ as top results, one of them could take precedence on the basis of the proximity to the user’s geographical location. “Place” related searches such as restaurants, coffee shops, shopping centers, health spas etc. could all utilize the locational aspect effectively to display intelligent results with the objective of making the entire user search experience ‘easy and comfortable’.

The second locational aspect could be based on the user’s social network and the associated dynamic data. For instance, while searching for a restaurant, the search result could return those places, which are frequented most by the user’s friends and influencers. It could also return results based on the number of friends already present at that place at that moment. This in a way combines both ‘social’ and ‘locational’ relevancy aspects in a search.

Personality Relevancy

Personality Relevancy forms the aspect of search incorporating some application of artificial intelligence. Based on daily dynamic data in the form of browser data, social data (facebook “likes”, comments, status updates, tweets, retweets) and search data could help analyze user personality and make a sound judgment of user preferences in the future. Incorporating this intelligence could constitute an interesting determinant in the overall search process. For instance, a user who has searched for ‘climate change’ in the past few weeks and interacted with people associated with ‘Greenpeace’ on Facebook and Twitter etc. would be sufficient to label the user as a ‘climate enthusiast’. The future search results on any topic could then be calibrated accordingly giving more importance to results having some connection with environment, climate or other related topic and issues. The possibilities that lie here are endless.

How search engines combine the above relevancy factors in their search algorithms will determine their success and user interest in their respective search platforms (Facebook+Bing, Google Search etc.). It is in this context again, that we must study the potential of Google and Facebook in the future of the search business. Both have established a solid foundation for the future. How they capitalize and build on that framework is the BIG question.

The past week has seen hectic activity in the social media space with search giant Google unveiling Google+, its answer to another tech behemoth in the social space, Facebook. In contrast to earlier Google product launches, Google+ saw a rather subdued introduction amid lesser fanfare. While much analysis of the Google+ platform has already been undertaken (and is still continuing) on various blogs and media outlets (Google+: First Impressions, How To Use Google Plus, Google+ Project: It’s Social, It’s Bold, It’s Fun.. ), our blog discussion will move beyond the nitty-gritties. While new features will continue to be added and some existing ones may be removed to make the platform attractive and acceptable to potential users, we will move a step ahead and analyze the real motive and thinking behind Google’s desperate moves to make it BIG in the social space. What could possibly be hurting a successful company like Google, which rules the Internet Search market to make repeated attempts at getting its social strategy right?

Let us first understand the aspects of data collection that takes place on the Internet. This understanding is critical for appreciating the larger strategy and thinking behind Google+. There are primarily two broad categories of data that are being sourced from the net every second to map user behaviour and user choices. They can be classified as 1) Static Data and 2) Dynamic Data.

A search keyword or a phrase such as “good places to eat” on Google would be considered as ‘static data’. A phrase like “good places to eat” tells Google about an individual’s possible interest in eating out, but nothing more. Its powerful search algorithm returns relevant results according to informational content, which caters to users’ search objectives well. Similarly, a map search for a generic keyword populates the map with ‘pins’, corresponding to those locations which show a certain level of relevance. There is however no relative ranking among the ‘pins’. Data of this kind is in abundance with Google, containing within it topics, places and questions troubling users’ minds. This data is static in nature, because it concerns a large group and the search data is not individual specific (there is a low chance of users being signed into Google, when searching). Also, search does not allow a two way information exchange between the user and the search engine. The information flow is one way from the search engine to the user.

The other category of data that is being collected (though not by Google, but its new competitor Facebook) is that which is related to “user activity and their likes”. This, we consider as ‘dynamic data’. Every time you ‘like’ a content posted by your friend on Facebook, you are indirectly letting Facebook know of your interests. This small piece of information from each one of its nearly 300-400 million active users is where Facebook‘s strength lies. The data is dynamic because the rapidly changing user preferences are reflected instantly through ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ people post on walls frequently. The most recent thought or dilemma of a user is reflected in his/her status update or the latest comment or even the latest content that he/she has shared. The inherent nature of such data makes it dynamic.

Another avenue for dynamic data collection is through monitoring browser activity. Site preferences of users and the duration of stay on each site is a rich source of information on user interests and choices. The information to a great extent allows extrapolating user personality and other behavourial aspects. The leaders in the browser business such as Microsoft, Mozilla and Google are assumed to possess insightful data on user activity around the globe. This could again be classified as ‘dynamic data’.

While we are now acquainted with the basic aspects of data collection on the Internet, let us now analyze where exactly the two leading players in the online world, Google and Facebook stand against each other and how Google+ fits into the larger scheme of things for Google.

Facebook has surpassed Google in dynamic data collection. Status updates, content sharing, comments present Facebook with a huge opportunity to tap into such data, were it to think of entering the search business in the future. Which it is most likely to do! It’s partnership with Microsoft has opened up new possibilities to acquire search data through Bing. The developing partnership between Facebook and Microsoft could essentially turn out to be the biggest threat to Google’s search monopoly. The crux of this assertion lies in the possibility of combining the two broad categories of data that we have discussed above. A search result powered by algorithms which ranks pages not only on the basis of informational relevancy (as Google does it now), but also on the basis of ‘recommendations’ and ‘likes’ from friends on the immediate social network of the user. The search paradigm could take a critical turn in its journey, if the two ideas meet at a convergence point.

Facebook, with its aggressive push towards filling the other half of the ‘Search container’ (the first half being the ‘dynamic data’ of users, which Facebook already has a tight grip on) by partnering with Microsoft Bing and lending support to a fast growing ‘social browser’ Rockmelt, has made its intentions clear. Two areas where Facebook found itself weak: 1) ‘static data’ related to search and 2) ‘dynamic data’ through browser activity; both have been plugged by these recent strategic moves.

Google on the other hand finds itself shackled. While it has phenomenal control on static data in the form of ‘search-related user behaviour’, it lacks substantially on the ‘dynamic data’ front. It is in this context that Google’s aggressive push towards a dedicated social strategy should be looked at. With the Google+ launch, the principal factor that Google seeks to plug in this high intensity battle is the one chink in its armour: ‘dynamic data’ in the form of social behaviour and choices. It has made a slow start on this front with +1. Still, for Google, there is a mountain to climb, which it will inevitably have to. Failure to do that would mean a serious damage to the search monopoly it has enjoyed over the years.

Nevertheless, the battle has only begun. And the main protagonists have just unsheathed their swords!

In Part 1 of our LBMS blog series, we dwelled on a new dynamic which came into play in the user’s environment: surrounding. Surrounding opens up new possibilities for brands to engage their customers by taking advantage of external conditions around them. Combining the external dynamics in designing customized ‘rewards’ could prove to be a lethal combination for a potential customer to resist.

What are the external dynamics that get unlocked with “surrounding”? There are 3 features that marketers could take into consideration: 1) Time 2) Weather and 3) Activity

Time

What time of the day is it? A question your brand must ask before it steps on the gas pedal, marketing its product to users. Analyzing user behaviour and choices at various times of the day and then designing targeted messages suited for that narrow time-window presents brands with an opportunity to extract maximum ROI. For instance, historical data could suggest most users to be heading out of their offices between 1:00 and 1:30 in the afternoon. A restaurant shop could use this dynamic to create campaigns targeted at those users, inviting them to visit their place. The idea here is to be the first responder to the user’s needs and desires. The ‘time’ dynamic enables the brand to do just that.

Weather

Simply put, weather drives what mood you are in and how you feel. The inner thoughts and feelings present in the sub-conscious mind are driven by a host of factors, weather being a primary participant. Now, imagine if your brand could utilize the ‘weather’ dynamic in influencing customers positively towards its product or service. How?

The answer lies in how we can identify the need or desire that takes birth inside the human mind as a result of this dynamic. For instance, a hot afternoon could immediately conceive thirst for a cool drink or an ice-cream. The situation provides an opportunity for an ice-cream or a cola brand to attract the customer with a customized offering centered on their product, thus pulling the customer deeper into the marketing funnel. “Location” and the corresponding ‘weather’ dynamic necessitates that brands refresh their messaging dynamically.

Activity

Consider the example:

X is a regular at a popular outlet of a large pizza chain. The mobile location records in the form of Foursquare “check-ins” suggests that X visits the pizza outlet at least once a week. Now, imagine if you were a new and small entrant in the pizza business looking to attract customers to your outlet, this presents an opportunity to target X with a personalized message combined with special offers and rewards. The location records of X suggest that he/she is a pizza lover, a liking which your brand could capitalize on to drive sales.

Location, once again, presents brands with information on their potential customers’ favourite activity. A girl who is a frequent visitor to the beauty salon could be a suitable target for marketing beauty products. Similarly, an avid reader who frequents book stores is an apt target for new offers on books. Using past history of user “check-ins”, brands can target potential customers with personalized messaging catering to their interests and liking.

Brightkite, an early mover in the area of location based marketing offers services on similar lines as discussed above. With its Ultra-Targeted-Advertising feature, it has successfully converted the potential that lies with external dynamics associated with surrounding, scripting phenomenal success for its partner clients.

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LBMS: Challenges for the Future

While we have witnessed the immense promise LBMS has to show in our discussions till now (and our earlier posts), it wouldn’t be wrong to say that hurdles still exist.

The following statistic from a recent survey from The Location Based Marketing Association and Social-Loco Conference, reveals the challenges that lie ahead for LBMS:

* 50 percent of mobile users do not own a smartphone
* 49 percent had no motivation to use social or location apps
* 48 percent had privacy concerns, citing concerns over their location details being compromised

While markets like the US and the Europe have seen a spurt in growth of smartphone sales, the situation could improve in the coming years. The challenge lies in how new infrastructure is created to facilitate real-time and accurate location data for such services to function seamlessly. While developed markets such as the US and the Europe boast of world-class mobile infrastructure, the opportunity in emerging markets yet lie untapped.

The ever expanding numbers of mobile users in developing markets are an encouraging sign; however, the principal requirement for high grade GPS technology and smartphones is stunting forward movement. Lack of mobile infrastructure too raises concerns.

A major impediment towards the success of location based marketing lies in user apprehensions regarding personal location data being misused. Also, there is always a psychological rock of “being under surveillance of some sort”, that further discourage users to participate in brand engagement processes on location based platforms.

The challenge for LBMS lies in how the two major concerns are addressed in the future: 1) High-end mobile technology available at economical rates to enable higher user adoption 2) Privacy concerns related to location history and information. The sooner these hurdles are crossed, the brighter the future of LBMS that beckons us all.