Economy of Social - Social Media Tips, Marketing and Business

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.

When a consumer believes that an advertisement is a sales tool rather than information dissemination medium, the consumer feels threatened. He turns for a solution to hos problem and the answer comes in the form of "Word-of-Mouth" Suresh is single and is unsure on How to impress a girl. His friend Ravi is dating priya, but is unsure on "How to" kiss. Kritika and Yogesh are married for 4 years and are having troubles with pregnancy. Raj just bought a new Nikon camera and is seeking advice on how to use it. His wife, Deepti is also keen on knowing "How to" use this latest facial cream that she brought from a lucrative sales promotion offer. Deepti's mom Neha is interested in knowing "How to write a blog" where she can talk about her cooking insights that she has gained in the last 20 years. She hopes her daughter Deepti will read her blog and prepare a delicious meal for her husband. The concept of "How to..." has become very popula...

Word of Mouth is capturing the mental space of many marketers especially the ones who have been open enough to embrace new media. Social Media has taken on the word like a storm thanks to some creative thinking by the Geeks in silicon valley. These nerds have given the "Non-Ners" a platform to socialize. Without wasting time on elaborating on the importance of Social Media (we all know about it), I'd like to talk about Word of Mouth that has taken the form of seeding campaigns adopted by marketers to spread awareness and increase adoption of their product. Recent research has studied the patterns in which bloggers write and its effects on the success of a seeding campaign. In one such study researchers analyzed the style of writing of bloggers and suggested effective styles that can be adopted by bloggers and marketers to make an Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) campaign effective. They came out with  two dimensions of a seeding campaign blog entry, one focusing on the dea...

We normally celebrate festivals with family and friends and that makes these occasions engaging. Mint reports   “ I think what we’ve found is that when you can use products with your friends and your family and the people you care about they tend to be more engaging ,” ~Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder)