Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

I came across this very interesting question on Quora asking " Why introverted people don't use social media? " I am sharing my thoughts based on research I've come across that can help us understand the relationship between a very important personality trait and social media usage. Introverts do use social media. The author was correct in pointing out that extroverts use social media more than introverts (Recent studies do indicate a positive impact of extraversion and social media use). However it depends on the context and the results have been mixed. In fact early studies pointed to the fact that introverts used social media (chat forums, messaging boards etc.) more than extroverts. I am sharing a few reasons below based on research on personality and social media usage.

Content creation and dissemination on social media can be a tricky thing. Creating good original content takes a lot of time and money. It is important to make the most of the content through social media assets for a brand. There are pros and cons of adapting and sharing the same content on all social media channels at the same time.

Instagram started as a iOS only application and quickly became a huge social networking website with a presence on Android and the web. An active and rapidly growing user base has made marketing on Instagram important for brands, small businesses and startups. Instagram has more than 75 million daily active users, with a total user base of over 400 million. Instagram users in 2015 were sharing over 70 million photos per day.  Given its growing importance we'll explore some easy tips that can help you with Instagram marketing.

On 12th April, a popular Indian newspaper published a story, " Who really runs AirAsia India? " It raised some interesting questions about the operations of Air Asia. It stated that " Documents, emails show that Malaysia’s AirAsia Bhd has final say in decision-making, in violation of the  Indian law." Today suddenly after approximately a week I saw #AirAsiaScam trending #1 on Twitter. This came barely hours after Air Asia announced Air fares starting at Rs 999 for flights across India.

Follow @Sushant_KM Choosing an appropriate hashtag for your social media campaign can prove to be a tricky exercise. At times it can also determine success or failure of your campaign. A bad choice can result in negative conversations about your. How can you differentiate and make your campaign stand out? How can you make sure that the message reaches your audience?

Rajnigandha Pan Masala, one of the sponsors at Jaipur Literature festival every year organizes a contest i.e #RajnigandhaSixWordStory. It's a interesting brand engagement consistent with the theme of the festival.  Users have to share a six word story and they can stand a chance to win. The event being one of the largest of its kind in the world attracts a lot of participation and so does the contest. This year however it did not go as planned and the contest backfired. The narrative on social media was not about the contest, literature or the Jaipur Literature festival. It became a narrative about Rajnigandha, chewing tobacco and oral cancer.

Twitter has launched its TV ad campaign promoting moments, which was launched earlier this month. Since Jack Dorsey has been handed over the reins at Twitter, a lot new has happened. Twitter finally seems to have a sound  product roadmap . One of the biggest challenges being faced by Twitter right now is its sluggish user growth as compared to Facebook (apart from the lack of a steady revenue stream). This campaign should hopefully help set things up and speed up the growth of Twitter.

Content Marketing is the buzz word right now. Content Marketing institute defines Content marketing as a  "strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. "

Being active on Social Media is no longer a competitive advantage for your brand. Everyone is doing it. Everyone is also focusing on content marketing, native ads and to add to your woes as a marketer is the ever increasing clutter on social media. So how can you differentiate and make your campaign stand out? How can you make sure that the message reaches your audience?

Facebook reached 1 billion unique users using its service in a day for the first time on 24th August. To put things in perspective, one in seven persons on Earth used Facebook (or only 85.7% of planet earth did not use Facebook). While 14.3% used Facebook on 24th August, it is important to note that over 65% of world's population brush their teeth from Colgate every day.

Social Media marketing and strategy is quite often focused on the content and story telling by brands on the channels owned by them. In reality a brand's channel and content may not even be checked or consumed by 99% of those who follow. Most of marketing efforts at times end up in shaping brand generated content, which quite often does not reach the audience or gets lost in clutter. A heavy focus on brand generated content in a social media strategy can make it in-effective. An important aspect of social media is user generated content. In the entire space of user generated content, influencers dominate content consumed by users. These are quite often active social media users who create more content and disseminate it through channels such as their blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Influencers also tend to demonstrate expertise in a particular area, which leads to community built around them and the content they create and share.

Online reputation management plays a very important role in building perception of a brand and in ultimately driving business results. User generated conversations and word of mouth have shown to have play a role in not just driving purchases but in also impacting stock prices. This makes having a strong Online Reputation Management system important for any brand. An effective Online reputation management system should contribute in building a positive perception of a brand through engagement and should lead to a higher equity for the brand.  Building online reputation and managing it requires benchmarking to assess performance of your brand and the team. It thus makes it important to select the right metric and understand its relevance.

Facebook has been the dominant social network for quite a while and has an active user base of more than 1.3 billion. Its proliferation in the 18-35 years of age group (52%) makes it ideal for most advertisers. An interesting statistic to observe is the number of people accessing Facebook through Mobile. One of the biggest shifts in social media behavior has been its greater usage through mobile devices (in particular smartphones).  According to a report , the internet traffic on mobile accounts for one forth the total internet traffic. Even more important is its growth, which is over 1.5 times per year and according to analysts would stay the same way in the years to come. This shift is even more significant for emerging economies where in a sector such as e-commerce organizations are witnessing close to 65% sales through mobile.

Twitter has been a brand friendly platform. One of the biggest reasons for wide adoption of Twitter by celebrities, and brands has been its swiftness in dissemination of information apart from its transparency in not restricting content (unlike Facebook). The openness of the platform makes it easy to monitor, listen and communicate. Activities such as live Tweeting capture interest in events and couple it with quick dissemination of information. Journalists and the news media has benefited a lot from this. The causes of its heavy adoption are easily visible in its utility in disseminating information at a rapid pace. To add some context, In 2011 when an earthquake hit near Richmond , Virginia, New York residents read about it on Twitter when, 30 seconds later, they felt the quake.

Social Media to a great extent has become a reflection of our offline lives. Although most of us are curating an identity on the social web, its elements contain a shade of our real self. Our expressions on social media are shaped to a good extent by our offline experiences. One of these experiences is our rendezvous with Television.

Let's face it. Facebook is not very popular among teens and you too have been bored with Facebook. There is absolutely nothing new to offer. It's interface has hardly changed and very few new features have been added.

Pepsi's high voltage campaign during IPL-6 has been the subject of much debate. It has even been linked to the resignation of Manu Anand , the Chairman of Pepsi India in June, 2013. To really understand the dynamics of Pepsi and its arch rival Coca-Cola, I did a study at Drizzlin Media to understand the performance of both these brands in the first half of 2013 (Findings below).

The trending of #WhatsappTalks on Twitter might seem like just another Twitter trend. But, it also indicates the emergence of private networks such as WhatsApp and others like it crossing the active user base of more popular networks such as Twitter.

I just saw an advertisement stating "Create a Facebook Profile. Signup for free today!" I read a huge interview of Mark Zuckerberg in the  newspaper today  (his first interaction with an Indian publication). An excerpt in his interview quoted him as saying " With 82 million monthly active Facebook users in India and a comparatively small Internet subscriber base, we have a long road ahead. "

I am NOT a BIG Proponent of BIG data for business use especially in identifying consumer behavior. It has a lot flaws that are being neglected in the present big data narrative. The interesting part that most of us neglect is "How is it useful?" It tells us what people are doing. Inferring why they are doing is up to the skill of the researcher and that is where most people fail. To give a short example it was only a few economists including the now famous Nouriel Roubini who predicted the 2008 recession. While all economists had access to the same data, most of them failed. There were cases where the predictions were almost divergent.