User Generated Content –These three words were being bandied across in marketing and social media circles last year. What is UGC and why are marketers making a huge deal about it? How does it empower the new-age marketer? Is user generated content the new currency—gold— in social media and marketing? The importance of user-generated content in the world of marketing, branding, and advertising is its capacity to influence purchase decisions, brand affinity and brand loyalty.

Here are the answers. User generated content was a big trend last year, a trend that is not a one-off affair. This trend is worth tracking because it represents a radically new definition of what constitutes value to the consumer. Co-creating with one’s consumers is an important one to watch not because content and experiences will be co-created by the consumer but because tapping into the ‘collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of hundreds of millions of consumers’ around the world is a complete departure from the inward looking marketing model which is so common to many brands and corporations around the world. For decades, these consumers have been saving up their insights and rants about the stuff they consume, simply because they didn’t have adequate means to interact with companies, or with other consumers for that matter. User Generated Content helps customers with direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them.

If content is king then, UGC is the content maker! UGC is content that is generated by people who visit your site. It is pretty straightforward. Forum entries, reviews, blog posts, comments and social mentions are among the types of content that can be generated by users. Be it entertainment, communications or e-commerce, consumers are increasingly in charge of the creation, distribution and consumption of digital content.

afaqs! Campus spoke to 40 experts to find out their One Big prediction in the Digital Marketing space in 2013. Also, Paurush Sonkar, Deputy Chief Manager
L&T General Insurance predicted that Marketing will be powered by UGC this year.

Big news organisations like BBC and CNN have been using User Generated Content to plug the gaps that their own journalists can’t cover – by submitting photos, videos and updates on breaking news. Contribution of user generated content (UGC) by the wider public or ‘citizen journalism’ is a common phenomenon.

Its benefits are that the audiences witnessing incidents can post eyewitness accounts on the Internet as soon as they happen or send reports and photos to the media. It provides inspiration to any brand wanting to turn its customers into ‘reporters’, sending in findings, observations, and suggestions. And as this model is spreading like wildfire, expect more consumers to ‘get’ and enjoy the concept. Sauvé marketers have caught up with the trend looking to leverage the web as an effective marketing and communications channel. The continual rise of social media, Google’s ever-changing algorithm, quality and fresh content play a central role in empowering the new marketer who relies on user generated content which can help companies rapidly scale and promote original content in a way that benefits both the company and the readers.

The advantages of UGC are massive; it paves path for a solid organic ranking, better SEO, it is highly cost-effective and very quick and easy to set-up, it also encourages and enables online visitors to enhance marketing, increase your site’s retention, bookings, enquiries, repeat visits and browsing time. This allows visitors to upload their own testimonials, reviews and experiences to your website that breeds loyalty and significantly enhances the interactivity of your site for online visitors.

2011 – 2012 was about companies understanding what UGC is all about. Companies shared that user-generated content is part of the new marketing paradigm, but more than half of companies have yet to fully recognize this very fundamental transition in marketing. However, many marketers predict that 2013 will be different and companies will officially seek UGC. Building marketing campaigns around user-generated content will be an important new ingredient in the marketing mix.

We have put together a bunch of reasons why companies will officially pursue UGC for 2013 and beyond:

Reason One

Explosion of Social Networks

With the number of people on social networks continuing to explode (according to eMarketer, there will be 114.5 million user-generated content creators online by 2013), the opportunity for brands to leverage content created by consumers in marketing efforts will continue to grow. The impact and power social media has when it comes to content sharing is massive; this is an understatement. UCG campaigns are huge drivers of social engagement. We have millions of tweets about our brands, thousands of Facebook ‘Likes’, hundreds of thousands of check-ins on Foursquare. Pinterest and Instagram are adding even more to social-media data deluge – very visually.

Here’s an interesting info graphic to demonstrate the same.

Reason Two

People look to others for a sense of reassurance and validation from people like themselves or Using Social Validation as a Marketing Tool

This sense of connection has been a driving force in the success of crowdsourcing and the harnessing of user generated content (UGC) in driving consideration and product sales. Campaigns created with crowd sourced content are novel. This has created a new channel allowing audiences to change their role from mere onlookers to participants. This multi-channel dialogue can empower fans to be a part of the experience. Companies and media organisations will look to use UCG in their marketing mix. Apparently 95% of the people need social validation before making a decision. Given that social validation is so rampant, it only seems natural to talk about it in terms of business marketing. Certainly reviews and client/customer testimonials serve this purpose. However, social media is playing a larger role in social validation each day.

Reason Three

Content sharing has evolved in the recent years

As newer smartphones showcase better camera technology, consumers are responding by creating and sharing better content with friends and network. Instagram, Viddy, YouTube, and Pinterest represent just a handful of companies who have skyrocketed to success based on sharing user-generated content. Many Indian companies like Mouthshut.com, Freshlimesoda.com, Sulekha.com, Shaadi.com and Naukari.com are great examples of sharing user-generated content.

Reason Four

UGC is an opportunity for true brand development

Brands use user-generated content to get authentic experiences andopinions from their audience, be it good or bad. A negative comment could really be an opportunity for brands to see where there’s a problem and also a chance to interact with someone that took the time to engage you online.

Reason Five

Companies and brands will figure out more practices for utilizing and leveraging user-generated

1.Brands will respond and engage more vehemently with people.

2.They will understand customers and their audience and will know what tools to provide and use.

3.Brands will be realistic with regard to what to expect from their users.

4. Brands will be realistic and will expect to have the good with the bad.

5. Brands and companies will recognize and reward active content users.

Reason Six

Bespoke Lifestyle of the new consumer

Today’s consumer doesn’t settle for anything that is run-of-the-mill.

He/she seeks something different; something is custom-made, tailored to his/her needs, something that is concierge or made-to-order. This guarantees goods, services and experiences that are tailored to their needs.

Amazon does it the right way!

Amazon has partnered with Facebook to bring a new layer and add an offshoot into product recommendations.

Now Amazon users will be able to link their Facebook account to their Amazon account. At the outset, this will allow Amazon to show you recommendations based on your Facebook interests and activity.

Let us know how your brand uses UGC in its marketing mix? Is your company looking forward to this new marketing paradigm?

You can connect with us on Twitter @futurontweets or you can follow us on Facebook.
Disclaimer: All links/image posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.

During the height of the economic meltdown I wanted to learn about some of the economists who had predicted this mayhem, apart from the usual names of the Austrian-economic school of thought, like Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente etc. I came across Web-bot Project created by Clif High and George Ure. It was a software originally designed to predict the stock market trends in the late 90’s. Their website claims that the scope of their functionality was extended to cover world events. This unique ability to predict world events a-la Nostradamus was into much controversy after a claimed 60% hits and 40% misses and off late there has been more misses than hits.

I was inclined towards this ‘savant’-like software because of their secret algorithm based on numerical values assigned to emotionally quantified lexicons with a focus on duration, impact, immediacy and intensity; after completely sidelining the reason for the switch from making literally billions of dollars every day by predicting the market (I mean it doesn’t make sense to move from such a lucrative business) to a fakir trying to make ends meet and living hand to mouth.

After almost four years I spent in awe of their ruse. I learnt of RIOT (Rapid Information Overlay Technology). RIOT is developed by Raytheon, world’s fifth largest defense contractor and is aimed towards tracking people’s movement on social media and predicting future behavior by mining data from social networking website.

Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based company has acknowledged that the technology was shared by the US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing “trillions of entities” from cyberspace.

Have authorities become so red handed that they are willing to ‘overtly’ convert the western world into Stasi, Germany?

It has harnessed and prompted civil liberties and online privacy concerns. The world witnessed the power of social media during the Arab Spring but most just stopped short from thinking about the ramification of it getting transformed into ‘Google for spies’ and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.

Raytheon’s “principal investigator” Brian Urch explains in a video that the photographs users post on social networks sometimes contain latitude and longitude details – automatically embedded by smartphones and tablets within “exif header data.”

RIOT pulls out the information along with the location where the photograph was taken.

“We’re going to track one of our own employees,” Urch says in the video, before bringing up pictures of “Nick,” a Raytheon staff member used as an example target. With information gathered from social networks, Riot quickly reveals Nick frequently visits Washington Nationals Park, where on one occasion he snapped a photograph of himself posing with a blonde haired woman.

“We know where Nick’s going, we know what Nick looks like,” Urch explains, “now we want to try to predict where he may be in the future.”

Riot can display on a spider-diagram and the intricacies between individuals online by looking at who they have communicated with over Twitter. It can also mine data from Facebook and sift GPS location information from Foursquare, a mobile phone app used by more than 25 million people to alert friends of their whereabouts. The Foursquare data can be used to display, in graph form, the top 10 places visited by tracked individuals and the times at which they visited them.

This shows that Nick, who posts his location regularly on Foursquare, visits a gym frequently at 6am early each week. Urch quips: “So if you ever did want to try to get hold of Nick, or maybe get hold of his laptop, you might want to visit the gym at 6am on a Monday.”

Data mining from public website for law enforcement purposes is legal in most countries. Federal Bureau of Investigation has requested help to develop a mining application to monitor bad actors and groups.

However, Ginger McCall, an attorney at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre, said that the Raytheon technology raises concerns about how copious amount of user data could be covertly collected without oversight or regulation.

“Social networking sites are often not transparent about what information is shared and how it is shared,” McCall said. “Users may be posting information that they believe will be viewed only by their friends, but instead, it is being viewed by government officials or pulled in by data collection services like the Riot search.”

Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems department, said in an email: “Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation’s rapidly changing security needs.

“Its innovative privacy features are the most robust that we’re aware of, enabling the sharing and analysis of data without personally identifiable information [such as social security numbers, bank or other financial account information] being disclosed.”

Late last year RIOT was featured in a newly published patent, Raytheon is pursuing for a system designed to gather data on people from social networks, blogs and other sources to identify whether they should be judged a security risk.

In April, Riot is scheduled to be showcased at a US government and industry national security conference for secretive, classified innovations, where it was listed under the category “big data – analytics, algorithms.

Can RIOT be a successful version of Web-bot because it has been created by organisation with deep pockets? If so, can it be used to accurately predict future events? Can Nostradamus revisit? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we can take sides on as to do we want security over freedom or freedom  over security.

In the end I would like to quote the great Roman Emperor.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present”

-Marcus Aurelius.

We cant wait to hear your views on whether you prefer freedom over security or security over freedom.

Here’s a clip that went viral this month, the clip shows an inebriated bystander trying to interrupt a live shot of a reporter, to which the peeved reporter instantly ropes the intruder into an embarrassing scenario by asking her, while camera is still rolling, “How long have you had an STD?”

The shocked intruder obviously responds saying she doesn’t have an STD, to which the reporter asks, with mock surprise, ‘’Then why did you want to talk?” The drunken woman, obviously embarrassed, starts drifting away while saying it’s disrespectful of the reporter to ask such a question.

I personally thought the clip was harmless if not hilariously funny, but I know of some people who think the reporter’s behaviour was unprofessional and her reaction was way too rude for a minor nuisance the interloper was causing.

Here’s another video of a resident who was interviewed by a news station after evacuating her from her apartment building that was set on fire. While describing the chaotic scene during her testimony she uttered the words ‘Ain’t nobody got time for that’. The clip was soon uploaded on YouTube and the sentence  ‘Ain’t nobody got time for that’ became famous within seconds, more after people started remixing the lines with famous songs. Check this video for instance!

Laughing at others expense?

I’m sure we have all come across such funny news or radio clips where the presenter plays pranks or embarrasses the innocent or the unknowing and the videos are uploaded on YouTube within an instant and shared on Facebook and Twitter for the world to watch it.

Sure, not all videos are insensitive; Many are actually very funny and far from being hurtful. In fact, hurting the feelings of someone is never the intention of the ones that play such pranks; their intention is to make everyone laugh. While many ‘victims’ do see the funny side and take the joke on them sportingly, presuming everybody would take the joke well would be a grave mistake.

The recent incident, where two Australian RJs made a prank call to the Royal Hospital to get pregnancy details of the duchess of Cambridge lead to the death of the one the prank was played on. The conscientious nurse, Jacinta, who gave away the details thinking she was talking to Queen Elizabeth was found dead the next day.

The case of Jacinta can be debated both ways, Facebook for example has pages like, Mel Greig and Michael Christian did nothing wrong, where the ‘fans’ of this page are supporting the RJs for not being guilty and many are hinting that the nurse could be suffering from an underlying depression as nobody would take such an extreme step for a mere prank.

And there are also pages like, Bring Mel Greig and Michael Christian for manslaughter, where the fans debate if the RJs should be punished for Jacinta’s suicide.

To laugh or to ignore?

The reason for writing this blog is not to take a stance on what is right. This blog is to make people cognizant of the fact that internet is as real as reality itself. The virtual nature of the internet is blurring the boundary between what behaviour is acceptable and what is not.

For instance, a friend might think twice before he/she criticises you on the way you look in person but might promptly criticise your photos on the net (in spite of being aware that everyone can read what they say about you) . The free publishing options and the seemingly casual atmosphere on the internet makes people post without giving much thought about what they say, but if the joke was them, the role, in all likelihood, would reverse.

What are your thoughts? Do you think online behaviour needs monitoring? Or are we too sensitive?

If your answer is yes to the first question, then who do you think should monitor these posts? And, how should one draw  a line between what is acceptable and what is not?

If your answer is no to the first question, how do you think we can make the internet a safe place to play with without the bullies misusing the internet for wrong reasons? We would love to hear from you!

As a social media consultant, my favorite marketing tool is Facebook, according to me it is one of the most phenomenal marketing tool invented. The advantages of which has been discussed in my last blog ‘Who likes my cheese?‘. But, something about the recent behaviour patterns of the fans got me thinking- how long can you keep your fans interested in your brand on Facebook? How long can you entice your fans with contests and free goodies?

Are people who ‘Like’ your page through paid ads or sponsored stories really interested in your brand? Do they really care about what you say?

The answer to all the above questions was ‘while most of our fans were interested in our products (or our client’s products), they didn’t really pay much attention to what we said’. The way we realised this was rather funny! We once posted about an offer that was available on one of the products as ‘Original Price: Rs. 360/-, Offer Price: Rs. 990/-’, when the actual prices were vice-versa. It was obviously a mistake on our part that lasted for all of 1 minute on the social platform, but what was shocking was the fact that we had about eight likes within that 1 minute of posting it and not one of them had pointed out the mistake to us! (Which we would have gladly accepted and probably rewarded them for the help)

This was quite alarming for us, since we thought that the number of ‘Likes’ translated into at least 70% the number of people  interested in the product that was being displayed. It was disappointing to learn that wasn’t the case but, without wasting much time we immediately jumped to action and decided to change the way we marketed on Facebook. We did not pay heed to the increase in the number of ‘Likes’ on our page as we had steady likes of 25+ coming every day from referrals, existing fans, paid advertisements and promoted posts, but, we were looking at people who were genuinely interested in our brand and pay attention to what we say on Facebook.

After a bit of research and social media listening, we realised what was going wrong. We realized we needed to rediscover a new set of fans that genuinely appreciated our products. The target audience was almost evolving and changing!

So, although the products were fantastic and we did everything right in terms of making our page look more visually appealing by conducting regular campaigns, answering queries- we somehow fell short of ‘connecting’ with our new set of target audience or shall we call them Fans.

The steps we took to ‘connect’ with the new fans

Following are some of the steps we adopted to improve the quality of the target audience, which might help a few of you facing similar problems:

Step one was to understand that although our product was for gadgets/technology lovers, it looked like the audience wanted more. We then identified the new set of target audience. Since we had created paid adverts for our brand, some who liked our brand were not exactly our perfect NEW target audience. But, being quite an established brand with 12,000 + likes, it was easy for us to pinpoint exactly who our brand was popular with and find other details like their age, gender, where were they situated and more. (Especially using Facebook insights)

Step two: Once we identified our ‘genuine fans’, who were youngsters aged between 17- 25, we studied their behaviour patterns. Once we did our research and listening we realised that most youngsters are quite fashion conscious (Of course, not much research was needed to come to this conclusion!). But, this helped us to custom brand the content to build a long-term relationship with our customers, present and potential alike. So although our product was for technology/gadgets lovers – the target audience actually had an inclination towards using our product as a FASHION statement too!

Step three was to talk about the topics that matter to the new target audience and to speak it in the ‘language’ they would identify with. For example- we started having more updates concerning fashion, we posted ‘memes’ that youngsters really like, and we had contests where we gave them an opportunity of design their own customized products!

Step four was to tie up with a young designer who is quite popular with the apt age group for engaging memes/designs and artwork. We decided to use her services to gain more traction.

The above four steps did seem to bring out a change in the way people responded to us, at least we started seeing less of ‘detached’, ‘uninterested’ fans (which is what we were concerned about) and slowly started seeing fans who started ‘connecting’ with our brand and responded to our posts with real interest. They not just ‘Liked’ but also ‘Shared’ posts that they thought was ‘cool’ and we managed to gain a great increase in the ever-so-popular ‘Word of mouth’ marketing tool.

Be Authentic.

The steps mentioned above may seem too simple or may not be applicable to all the brands, especially if the brand is bigger and has a diverse business. While we, at futurON, agree that paid advertising will/can grab attention, we truly believe that organic advertising is when you get the maximum attention/interest/engagement - especially if you are looking for a long term relationship with your target audience.

Brands have to adopt new values to broaden consumer demand, be it online or offline. Brands can no longer just do with ‘buying likes’ or by blatantly promoting their products/services – even if they get the first ‘Like’, it does not guarantee constant connection with the Fan.

Today’s consumers don’t want to feel like they are witnessing a sales pitch. One has to connect with them either by being a useful source of information or by connecting with them through topics that matter to them. Take for example what Coke does with Coke Studio, building its brand through a community of music lovers or what P&G is doing with Style Factor, a custom-branded site for women on Yahoo!

Chennai Shopping, a Facebook page that deals with all things retail, which grew from 10 members to an astounding 28, 038 (purely organically) in less than a year is a great example of how there is a huge scope to advertise your brand without spending a penny.

So, brands will strike gold as long as they understand that they have to do more than just blow their own trumpet in the market to bring value to their company, as this is an age where the consumers are way too smart to fall for clever/instant marketing tactics.

Many professionals in the marketing and advertising industry will debate which is more useful for certain brands – organic or paid advertising. Let us know what you think. You can connect with us on Twitter or you can follow us on Facebook.

Disclaimer: All links/image posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.

“Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The U.S. attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims.”

-Swartz family eulogy as posted on his memorial website.

I started writing the blog almost two weeks after the death of Aaron and in these two weeks, I gauged and witnessed anger, grief and sorrow on both mainstream media and alternate media. It was a compelling observation.

On 11^th January 2013, a young American geek named, Aaron Swartz was ‘led’ to commit suicide. He was an activist of the virtual space and was committed towards bringing freedom and emancipation of the internet. He was also the founder of Infogami which was later merged with Reddit in 2005, thus making him an equal partner.

Aaron Swartz

His death created no ripples within the realms of mainstream media but on cyberspace it created a furore perhaps because of his ridiculous talent and the honorable vision of open source web and more importantly freedom of knowledge. This idealistic, complex and diminutive lad was a poster boy for everything we value about the networked world.

This furore on the blogosphere resounded not only for two weeks, and will certainly not culminate with the hacking of US government agency website by ‘Anonymous’, but it also resounded with the expression of grief, sadness and loss but also of anger. Many people feel that Swartz has been led to his death by aggressive federal prosecutors and a Government bent towards bringing a world order which would be marred by absolute control of its subjects. These emotions were not only felt by people who knew this wonder boy but also from people afar- the users of the things he helped create.

The quantum of people who expressed anger at this incident were far less than those who expressed grief and sadness. This stems from the fact that the reasons that led Aaron to suicide were hidden in plain sight in the texts of the prosecution launched in Massachusetts- United States of America vs. Aaron Swartz 11-cr-10260. According to this prosecution Aaron Swartz was being charged with ‘wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, recklessly damaging a protected computer, aiding and abetting and criminal forfeiture’.

Aaron Swartz Indictment

Let us look at the ‘crime’ he committed and the quanta of punishment he was looking at.

Aaron, in furtherance to his belief that academic publications should be freely available, had covertly hooked up a laptop to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology network and used it to download millions of articles from the JSTOR archive of academic publications. This stunt of his was thought as unwise even from those who shared his belief but this unwise stunt did not deserve a 35 years in prison and $1m fine.

The truly shocking and disconcerting aspect of this trial was the vindictiveness of the prosecution. The prosecutor left no stones unturned towards portraying Aaron as major cyber-criminal who was stealing valuable information for personal gain.

“The outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron,” wrote Lawrence Lessig, the distinguished lawyer who was also one of Swartz’s mentors. “It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor’s behaviour. From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The ‘property’ Aaron had ‘stolen’, we were told, was worth ‘millions of dollars’ – with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash of academic articles is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.”

What was the reason for creating a tempest in teapot?

After reading his prosecution I recollected the famous lines of Alexander Pope-

“What? That thing of silk,
that mere white curd of Ass’s milk,
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?”

Indeed, who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? It would be possible to write off the Swartz prosecution (as some have done) as the action of an electorally ambitious attorney general, but actually it fits a much more menacing pattern. It was clear that a decision had been made to make an example of this sassy young hacker and in that sense this outlandish prosecution sits ‘gracefully’ alongside the treatment of Corporal Bradley Manning, not to mention the frenzied reaction of the US authorities to WikiLeaks.

Governments have since September 11, 2001, converted democracies towards national security states-the Orwellian states. Internet for its vastness and radicalness is a challenge to the authority. So the electorates under the garb of cybercrime, piracy and child pornography have issued rationales for their actions. It can be gleaned from the texts of various blogs and articles both on the mainstream and alternate media that there has been a forceful suppression of the news emanating from the mainstream. No one challenged as to why this wunderkind was taken in the same parlance with a rapist and a terrorist. Perhaps he did terrorise the autocratic’s by his liberal views. Till the time this specter becomes increasingly visible to the masses, few geeky hackers and brainboxes would continue getting prosecuted.

RIP Aaron Swartz.

Please write in your thoughts or comments. You can connect with us on Twitter or you can follow us on Facebook.

Disclaimer: All links/image posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.

Facebook has become such an integral part of our lives and society that we have made it a fact of life. It is a vast source of social stimulation that showcases the glamorous and interesting aspects of our everyday lives. Although Facebook has many beneficial aspects like easy access to upcoming events and increased contact with old friends, it also allows users to build their own brand image to portray themselves as they want others to see them.

Facebook has changed over the years; from alumni to a networking website. Changes that have crept into Facebook have, at times, been directed by the zeitgeist. Such changes have been controversial and less spoken off. We at futurON are trying to showcase two of them, one concerning privacy and the other festooning cashless society.

Aiding and abetting law?

“Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.”
- John Perry Barlow

Facebook has grown, and along with it the concerns of privacy infringement. This user-concern is not limited to Facebook but finds space in most other social media platforms.

What is privacy? Oxford dictionary defines it as a ‘state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people’. This definition has clearly confined privacy to a utopian world.

Why the fuss? Some sections of the society believe that it is the intent that is dubious and harmful. The idea of selling users personal info for a fee is criminal.

Privacy has been a double edged sword; governments claim that in order to fight terrorism they need sweeping powers over its citizenry, thus colluding with their privacy. This big brother attitude has changed the fabric of society, where people, ironically, do not mind the control but questions the state sponsored attack on privacy.

Decide for yourself.

Facebook monitors users’ chat to identify and report “suspicious” criminal activity. The screening process commences with scanning software monitoring chats for words and phrases that signal vulgarity, abuse and exchange of personal information. The scanning program is smart enough to keep an eye out for certain words and phrases found in the previously obtained chat records from criminals including sexual predators. The scanning software then flags and notifies Facebook security employees, the suspicious chat exchanges, who then determine if police should be notified.

In a recent interview by Joe Sullivan (Chief Security Officer at Facebook), to Reuters, he states, “We’ve never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications, so it’s really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate.”

Facebook works with law enforcement “where appropriate and to the extent required by law to ensure the safety of the people who use Facebook,” according to a page on its site.

In order to allay criticism from privacy advocates, Facebook has long stated that scanned chats are out of sight from most of the employees, but it stops short of mentioning whether the scanned chats are deleted or stored permanently.
Is it due to some ulterior motives or a genuine concern towards creating a crime free society? Only time will tell.

What are your thoughts?

Aiding and abetting a cashless society?

I cannot imagine a world without cash. I may be a romantic, but the feel of crisp notes in my hand sends me to a journey to the materialistic world, a world which my Id abhors.

Many souls like me have tried to subdue this feeling, to help government tighten the noose around the curse of black money, tax evasion, Ponzi’s, etc.

A lot of countries, world over are encouraging the use of plastic currencies; some countries have passed legislation that entails all transaction above a threshold to be non-cash in nature.

It might not be euphonious, but is it completely cacophonous? Decide for yourself.

Facebook is developing and beta testing an app that would allow users to “pay their utility bills, balance their checkbooks, and transfer money at the same time they upload vacation photos on the site for friends to see.

This new application is currently running in beta phase with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ICICI Bank in India and KeyPoint Credit Union. It allows users to view account details and mini statements as well as apply for debit cards, requisition of chequebooks, and payment of utilities bill through an ‘alleged’ secure SSL connection.

Facebook is known for many things but none apropos respect for privacy. Mark Zuckerberg has shown his overt derision towards the concept of privacy.

In spite of this scornful, contemptuous and sneering jibe-like stand regarding privacy, both Facebook and the participants in this emerging app are assuring future customers that there is no need for concern regarding leakages of personal data.

Keeping all this in mind, would anyone in their right mind trust their online banking and financial information with them?

The answer is likely to be a resounding approval.

Ana Kasparian accurately summed up some of the concerns regarding online banking privacy and the new Facebook app, “And I’ll tell you what my conspiracy theory is. Facebook makes money by selling ads. And the way that they sell ads is by telling the advertisers what their users are spending their money on. If they have the ability to see what you’re spending your money on via BillPay, on their website, then they’re going to sell that information to a third party. And then they’re going to be like ‘What? What privacy? What are you talking about?”

The increasing number of such apps will undoubtedly produce an increase in the number of hacking and identity theft incidents. Thus, the public that was so easily inveigled to use these programs under the habiliment of convenience will be called for an increased level of security to reduce the ability of hackers to access the data they freely offered online.

These concerns are likely to go unheeded. It will be only discussed as a public relation move designed to placate those on the fence. In the end it, is just one more step towards the ultimate goal of the cashless society and the requirement that even the most personal information such as iris scan, fingerprints, vein scans, facial photograph and even DNA swabs be surrendered for the purpose of data security.

These programs are always introduced through a totalitarian tip-toe under the guise of convenience. Then as more and more people take the bait, the older methods of payment are advertised as cumbersome and are phased out completely.

It is ironical that people are losing their discerning abilities apropos such agendas. They forget that they can use online banking facilities and Facebook at the same time by opening a second tab of the browser!

What are your thoughts on cashless society?

Conclusion

The kind of policies that Facebook has incorporated and is incorporating daily is a matter of concern for all of us. The freedom of expression, once its raison-d’être, now figures only in their taxonomy. The wall of Facebook, a wall where thoughts were penned; laughter shared; love hatched, tears dispelled, has now become an abattoir of that freedom.

Post 9/11, all the revolutions, from the depths of Urals to the shores of the Nile, have been made possible primarily due to the advent of Social Media acting as the proponent of freedom of expression and perhaps these revolutions have resulted in Facebook acquiescing with the Machiavellian-like state policies and demands of the despots’.

Let us know what you feel about your privacy concerns and the idea of living in a world with plastic money?

You can connect with us on Twitter or you can follow us on Facebook.

Disclaimer: All links/image posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.

So there I was, hungry, mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook page, wondering what to order for lunch, when a Sin-A-Mon caught my eye. ‘That is a strange sounding name’, I thought, for a bakery advertising online.  Wait a second! A bakery? Online?! Is the seller nuts?! What’re they going to do? FedEx me some cake or cookies? Intrigued, I clicked on the page, and I swear to you, my life hasn’t been the same since!

Sin-A-Mon is a small bakery run out of her home by Monica, where she bakes the most unique delicacies, different every day. All I had to do was to ping Monica on her Facebook page, and the same evening I was relishing yummy garlic pull-aparts at home. What a classic and live example of successfully monetizing Social Media Marketing I thought!

Having said that, I can’t help but think; how it would have been for Sin-A-Mon to succeed had it followed the regular run-of-the-mill techniques. Say, distributing paper pamphlets door-to-door, or maybe even plugging an advert into the newspaper. Would folks have dumped the pamphlets to the trash and would the paper advert have been forgotten?

Sin-A-Mon’s brilliant use of social media strategy surely seems to reach its target audience with over 2,300 likes for its Facebook page! I am guessing there are plenty more happy customers?

Clearly, marketers have been using Facebook,  once a personal social networking site, to suit their networking and promotional needs. Why shouldn’t they? There are more than a billion active users where more businesses, large and small, can actively reach and engage with their customers.

Facebook has come a long way from being a personal platform for people to meet and interact. It has become a major marketing tool for businesses of all sizes, allowing  their rubber meet the road successfully.

For small businesses, either just starting out on their long journey to becoming large successful corporations, or for someone who would just be selling bakes online as a hobby, the possibilities are practically infinite. At first glance, Facebook is highly affordable, so someone with a few hundred dollars as her/his marketing budget is, possibly, as powerful as someone with millions as disposal. New marketing tools like ‘Sponsored stories’ and ‘Promote your updates’ allows discovering the businesses page, app or event through friends easier and helps promote stories that make word-of-mouth publicity more effective. Using these tools and customizing the Facebook ad, small companies see their products go viral in no time, with almost as little efforts as updating their Facebook page with latest products or offers from their side to push their stuff to their customers.

Big businesses too can no longer ignore this platform where their customer is their brand ambassador, and very visibly so. A few weeks ago when Facebook crossed 1 billion users, ears pricked, the world took notice. Brand managers cannot afford to think that the online platform is simply a passing fad. They know now that it is here to stay. Television advertisements for big brands implore users to go online and post votes, contribute to online contests, and connect with their friends based on their common love for the brand in question.

Companies such as Flipkart or Airtel have online presence which means that their customers can interact with their brands online and seek resolutions to their problems which would otherwise go round and round on customer service phone lines. It also becomes convenient to inform customers about the new services or products the big brands are offering.

The brand managers also realise that the growing base of urban youth no longer consumes as much televised content as their predecessors did; people are more glued to their phones than the tube. If a single Facebook page on Anna Hazare was all it took for the nation to stand together and fight against anti-corruption, then a whole Facebook campaign can indeed do wonders to an advertising campaign!

Engaging with the Facebook audience can lead to a surefire way to grow your business as your ‘fan’ could very well become your evangelist and he/she is indeed going to help you sell your product better than you possibly could. Hence, it is very important to set basic ground rules before starting out. The important elements like the language, the tonality and the messaging have to be consistent and match the brand’s image. One must not forget that the audience is constantly judging the brand by the posts it updates and ignorance in this department can make or break the brand’s image.

Ways of engaging…

Contests on Facebook, is a great way of engaging your ‘fans’ and could lead to attracting the targeted type of customers to the page, and in the hope of getting a prize, at least, customers, actual and prospective alike, would be active on the page. Our blogger, Aishwarya Rao has highlighted the importance of how social contests help one in getting loyal customers.

Polls and voting applications, people love fun ways to engage on Facebook and asking them their opinion on polls could make them feel like they are contributing to help you make better products for them. This kind of engagement leads to building loyal customer base and businesses acquiring genuine feedback from its customers to improve their business.

Keeping your Facebook page updated is as important as setting it up. Facebook marketing is not something you set up and forget. It requires regular updates with new pictures, videos and posts from your brand. The simple idea behind doing this is to keep your audience engaged or they will simply stop paying attention to you.

The brands must ensure participation in discussions and respond to concerns. This way the audience will know that there is a real person driving the brand and their loyalty will grow for the brand. However, a word of caution to the marketers, one must draw a line as to how many posts should be updated per day, as bombarding your audience can lead them to hide your posts or worse ‘unlike’ your page.

Is Facebook useful for B2C businesses only?

From the instances given so far, we know we have enough proof of how Facebook is a great tool for B2C businesses for self-branding and promoting their products/services/discounts etc.

Facebook has been responsible for making success out of a small start up like Chumbak which drives 25% of its revenue entirely from Facebook to big companies like Coca Cola in keeping their loyal customer base charmed by them!

But what about B2B businesses, you think?

Many generally assume that Facebook is best suited for consumer businesses because it helps them converse with customers and promote their products. Since Facebook is perceived as being casual, businesses think it is rather inappropriate to network with other businesses on this platform. However, what they forget is, businesses are run by people and they are on Facebook too. Even if they happen to stumble upon your page when using it for personal reasons, you can captivate their attention and this could be the first step to the beginning of a potential business relationship.

B2B companies have started exploring Facebook as an option to market themselves and we have been seeing a steady increase in the number of B2B business pages on Facebook.

For B2B companies, Facebook or any social media is best utilised for networking and sharing knowledge. Sharing intelligent and authentic knowledge by sharing blogs on you page will get you noticed as a company that knows a lot about a particular subject and help you earn their trust and appreciation…and not to forget business eventually!

As with all marketing strategies, B2B businesses should have a strategic marketing plan in place before getting started on Facebook. What blogs or industry news could/should be shared should be carefully decided in advance to prove you are an expert in your industry.

To summarise…

Facebook is a very powerful marketing tool. It has an incredible ability to make information go viral through networks, which is the primary goal of businesses to create a Facebook page. One just has to be armed with the right kind of marketing strategy to set their business soaring higher than they had ever imagined.

Let us know how are you using Facebook for your business. You can connect with us on Twitter @futurontweets or you can follow us on Facebook.

Disclaimer: All links/image posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.

Phew! The year sure went by fast. New Year is the perfect time to look back into the past and make plans for the future in an effort to make our lives better in the coming year. Although many of us make lofty plans and ‘New Year Resolutions’, it has convinced me that resolutions (made right) can make a huge difference in boosting happiness and productivity level, be it personal or in social media!

Before we jump into our resolutions, here is a quick look at 2012 and 2013!

How 2012 looked for Social Media?

How will 2013 hold for social media?

Whether we believe it or not…social media is here to stay. Social network usage, e-commerce, social television, social CRM as well as social gaming will be the BIG trends in 2013. The info-graphic above demonstrates a shift towards a greater and deeper understanding of social from everybody associated and engaged in digital marketing and social media. Some of these trends have already emerged in 2012 but they will become more prominent and pronounced in 2013.

Social media is fun and everyone is taking time/effort to learn…but we at futurON believe that 2013 is a time to get a little serious – so why not start with some resolutions for the New Year?

Here’s my list that I believe will make social media as effective as possible  – feel free to add more!

SOCIAL MEDIA RESOLUTIONS

a) I will understand that social media is about relationships and not broadcasts

This is the first splendid truth! People on virtual social platforms are way smarter than assumed. It is important to have a personal connection or a relationship with the audience; this is the cornerstone of any marketing strategy. Many times huge corporates don’t engage in a discussion or seed a dialogue and in many cases, social media becomes a broadcasting tool with no interaction what so ever. This makes the organization look sales hungry and can put off a customer so very easily! It makes the effort no different from any other mass media broadcasting exercise like television, radio or the newspaper.

Furthermore it is also important to figure out how to create original content, manage content development and link social media plans with business strategies, which will lead to building relationships with the desired audience. Successful brands are building relationships with existing and new clients without making them feel like pawns in the mission to close a sale.  With more than 26.7 million ‘LIKES’ Red Bull’s Facebook Page ranks in the top 50 branded pages on the world’s largest social network. The brand’s most popular posts are extreme sports videos and photos – sometimes garnering thousands of re-shares onto the personal Facebook profiles of its fans. Many, but not all of these videos are of Red Bull’s own sponsored athletes. Red Bull relies heavily on its engagement metric to measure success!

b) I will use Google+

Why should I use Google+ is a question often asked by Social Media Gurus and practitioners. Well, Guy Kawasaki Wants You To Love Google+ As Much As He Does is an Interesting read for all of us who have stayed away from Google+.

Google+ usage is on the rise and as of February 2012 and it drew over 40MM unique visitors in December 2011 alone. Google+ is still nascent and it does require more attention than one would give other burgeoning social networks. Here are a bunch of reasons why:

Reason One

G+ may at first glance seem very similar to Facebook, but it’s not. G+ is the step towards Web 3.0 and semantics. It is intended as a hub for all of Google’s services. For Google it is important to interconnect Search, YouTube, and Newsgroups and make it all integrated with each other to greater extent than ever before and for better user experience.

Reason Two

Google+ posts can be referenced through unique links and shared publicly. There is no need to worry about whether or not someone has a Google+ account. Everyone can view your public content regardless of their Google+ account status.

Reason Three

The analytics are built right into the G+ Design and one doesn’t need foreign tools to measure data and information.

Reason Four

Many businesses have stayed away from Google+. And this means beat a lot of the competitors to the punch if they haven’t got their feet wet as yet! What are you waiting for? Make the leap now!

c) I will take the visual route

Facebook acquiring Instagram and Pinterest hitting the 10 million-visitor mark faster than any other site are a few strong examples of brands going visual, hence I’m embracing visual too!

Read this interesting article why Facebook bought Instagram by the Forbes magazine. Visuals are engaging, easy to consume and are high on emotional quotient. 2013 is the year when we will truly feel the rise of visual marketing. Visuals and video done right are highly effective in cutting through the noise and clutter.

Experts at futurON, like Khusbhu Doshi in her blog, Growing digital trends in 2012, have already explained the advantages of visual. Pictures top the list of things social media users enjoy seeing from their friends and this kind of content resonates with people everywhere and it increases engagement across social nets. Corporates and brands have to understand what it takes to do visual marketing well. They have to participate in different forms of visual social media, whether it is Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest. Visual has become one of the top de-facto methods of cataloguing, sorting, filtering and understanding the vast amount of information we see every day. One in four consumers’ reports say that they are spending less time on other social media sites in favor of Pinterest. EdgeRank prefers visual content too. This means that photos get more visibility for your content on Facebook.

Photos have more interaction than statuses, likes, links or shares. Infact, photos often get from 5 to 20 times as much interaction as any other type of Facebook post. A popular mobile and laptop accessory brand has managed to garner a lot interest because they are taking the visual route. Most smart brands will leverage this to the optimum and to stay ahead of the curve.

d) I will monitor my social footprint

How can I define and measure success on Social Media? Do I understand the power of Social currency? Do marketers still grapple with what and how to measure?

We are still in the early days for social; we haven’t discovered a solution to solve the measurement conundrum. But ROI is an important consideration when evaluating social media’s effectiveness as a marketing tool. Also, The advance of social media has added layers of complexity to the engagement challenge. It has given us more areas of engagement to consider, from Likes, tweets, views, comments, shares, reviews to views. This makes it imperative to measure the success of every piece of content shared; be it likes, shares, pins, re-pins, re-tweets and more. It is also important to monitor and respond to what’s being said about one’s brand online. Facebook is the social media platform that CMOs say currently provides the highest ROI. However, 77 % of CMOs plan to increase their investment in YouTube, narrowly beating out Facebook (75 %) as the most popular social media platform of the future. Other popular social media platforms for future investment include Twitter (73 %) and LinkedIn (61 %).

Here are a few metrics that are moving the needle for big brands.

Metric One

Share of voice – This isn’t a straight-up ROI measurement metric, but it measures how a company is performing relative to its competitors and relative to all communication methods. It also means generating coverage and mindshare, and communicating brand attributes to the primary targets.

Metric Two

Reach – This ” measures the overall “noise level” in the market as well as how effective a specific brand is in reaching its target audience.

Metric Three

Conversations – Conversations put the social in social media. Creating dialogues is important in creating brand affinity and it is imperative to send that good morning message out.

Metric Four

Advocates

iv) Advocates, evangelists, early adopters, loyal customers, brand champions, influencers, promoters and fans and super fans help one in getting one’s voice heard across the myriad social channels. They are highly passionate about your brand and they help in building conversation. They also help in reducing your support costs and helping in building brand confidence. One can also abstain from tom-tomming about one’s brand.

e) I will integrate Case studies and testimonials on all my social networks

It is largely the emotional connects that makes the consumer. Case studies and testimonials work tremendously because it’s all about people like us. When potential customers check out our business online, they want to see proof that we deliver what we promise. It is evidence that we have happy customers!

iAccy’s ‘Happy Fan Club ‘share pictures of their gifts, here’s a screen-shot.

f) I will plan my social media-marketing budget

Even in today’s challenging economic climate – when companies frequently look to their marketing budgets for cost-saving opportunities – it’s still important to persevere efforts, especially on social networks. One should keep a tab on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) time and again to ensure that it is contributing to the business and is not a dead investment. Reviewing the marketing plan and integrating into it the social media plan into is very important. It is also important  to figure out what channels one would be spending money on, map out budgetary considerations for contests and promotions.

When allocating marketing budget to social media, there are a few things that must be factored in

a) Personnel – One must be willing to set aside staff to monitor the company’s profile, respond to comments, and engage with potential customers and build a rapport with them. Social media specialists can make ads for business to disseminate through social media channels.

b) Quality Content — Quality content is the best way to keep your social media presence vital, and, if its good enough, you will get a lot more traffic through positive feedback and incoming links.

c) Analytics – Even if one has a dedicated to monitor social media and top-notch content, all the efforts will be for nothing if one cannot measure the effectiveness of this activity.

Experts say social media spending will be MORE than double in the next five years!

The August 2012 survey finds that social media currently makes up an average of 7.6% of respondents’ total marketing budgets, up from7.4% in February.

g) I will not be on multiple channels if I don’t have the right resources to manage them.

Owning multiple social media channels can be a good idea only if one has the right resources to manage them. Half-baked efforts can do more damage to the brand. Most brands desire to be on multiple social platforms without understanding how these platforms work. Corporates are stressed by the increased demands of customers who want a response wherever and whenever they ask for help, although intentions to provide social customer service are on the right track, many corporates are not structured to handle it in terms of resource allocation, integration, and efficiency. The strategy here is to focus on a couple of relevant channels that suit the brand and to deliver excellent quality, higher satisfaction and targeting the right people.

Fashion, ecommerce and media brands are flocking to Pinterest despite it being a relatively new social platform. The mass market is on Pinterest and it is super easy for fashion and e-commerce brands to jump on and experiment. These brands have images of their products, stores, or commodities being pinned every day. So there is a drag affect. Hence Pinterest can turn your brand red-hot!

h) I will understand the real-time business mindset

The social web has exploded in the last year and Social Media can help you understand what’s happening and respond quickly to any crisis and timing is everything in customer service satisfaction. Social media is about immediacy. Traditionally, customers expect a response within 24 hours, but social media is bringing immediacy to interactions that cannot be ignored.

More and more companies are finding their way to the social web to answer questions of clients and prospects. But many brands forget to offer speed and real value to customers. Speed and around the clock availability will be needed to stand out. If one jilts the members, expect them to leave you in their dust.

In closing, successful social-media management involves production requirements, tools, relevant content, analytics and other aspects of work. We have so much to look forward to in the coming year. I’m already curiously waiting what will 2013 bring for social media marketing and beyond!

Ah well, speaking of personal resolutions, mine are to laugh less hysterically, cut down on my caffeine intake and of course to find my Mr. Right!

Do let us know what your New Year resolutions are for 2013,both social media and personal. You can connect with us on twitter @futurontweets or you can follow us on Facebook.

Disclaimer: All links/image posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.

If the world were to end this month according to Mayan predictions, it would surely be a shame since 2012 unfolded so many promising events! Yes, these milestones make us look forward to 2013 even more!

CLICK ON THE INFO-GRAPHIC FOR A BIGGER & BETTER VIEW

Let’s begin with Facebook, which now has a billion+ users

An exciting year for Facebook one would say. Facebook started the year by making Timeline mandatory for all its users, following it up the next month with an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and then quickly introduced features that allowed, for instance, advertisements to be slipped into status messages of users. Instagram was acquired for $ 1 billion in cash and stock. Facebook started trading on NASDAQ stock market under ticker symbol FB. In becoming more user friendly, Facebook gave users more clarity on improving their online privacy, improved picture viewing to give users a more wholesome experience and introduced the Facebook messenger that allowed users to chat with their contacts without using a browser, among many other developments. Facebook has 425 million mobile users.

Moving on to Twitter, the birds are chirping louder!

Twitter started the year by changing the bird logo as its sole signifier. A richer profile page was introduced, allowing brands to engage much better with their customers; this included the option to have a profile picture, as well as a background image, permitting for a more customised advertising platform to be visible to customers. In order to reach a wider audience, Twitter introduced multiple languages in their tweets and also created a weekly newsletter that would update users on the latest happenings. The number of users on Twitter increased massively making it even stronger and permanent feature in the social media space. If Twitter was a country it would be the 12th largest in the world!

Now for Mr. Professional – LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the most successful professional social networking website, became more employer friendly in 2012. With the introduction of newly designed personal as well as business pages, companies could now be followed by prospective employees, and could engage with their employee base even better than before. Companies on LinkedIn could now be ‘Shared’ with contacts by the users. LinkedIn signed up 2 new members every second this year!

Coming to Youtube, the world’s second most visited website

YouTube changed their design to give users a cleaner and more efficient look and feel, allowing them to subscribe to feeds of their preference. It allowed users to watch clips and recaps of their favorite television programs online through the Channel Page; it also introduced automatic captions in 6 languages for videos sans subtitles. The average visitor spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube.

Moving on to Pinterest, the fastest standalone website

Pinterest, was the fastest standalone website in the history of the web to cross 10 million unique users every month and then ran into copyright issues earlier this year, but has since outgrown the problem by introducing automatic captioning to images taken from different sources, making almost all the pins legal. It is interesting to note that 97% of the fans on Pinterest’s Facebook page are women.

Last but certainly not the least – Google+

The folks at Google+ have remained resolutely steadfast in their move to gain more market share. Google Ripples, a new tool for visualization for public shares and comments, was introduced, as was GoMo, helping businesses create mobile friendly sites. The Google +1 button is used 5 billion times every day.

The Big Leap in Social Media Marketing

Here is a quick look on what’s cooking with social media in 2012 that makes 2013 look so tempting!

1. According to Marketingeasy, an average mid-sized or large company(1000+ employees) has 178 ‘social media assets’, yet only 25% of them offer social business training to their employees.
2. B2B Magazine says that B2B marketers believe social media is imperative for success in organic search and social media is the second most important factor at 64%, second only to strong content which is rated at 82%.
3. Marketing Charts says that in spite of Facebook being the most important social media lead generation tool for B2C marketers, among B2B companies, LinkedIn was the most effective, followed by company blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.
4. If Social Media B2B is anything to go by, LinkedIn generates more leads for B2B companies than Facebook, Twitter or blogs. Yet only 47% of B2B marketers say they are actively using LinkedIn vs. 90% on Facebook.
5. Around 33% of global B2B buyers use social media to engage with their vendors, and three-quarters expect to use social media in future purchases processes, according to Social Media B2B.

Evidently, none of the social media sites have shown any signs of relenting from doing their level best to improve their online activities. What has significantly improved this year is the enhanced user experience across devices and platforms. With the boom of smartphones, tablets, and ‘phablets’ in developed as well as developing markets like India and China, Social Media has a long way to go from coming of age and in the future, the opportunities for Marketing in Social Media only seem to be increasing. We believe that with more intelligent Social Media Marketing, the reach to the end customer is only going to get better!

To summarise; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Google+ to name a few, have remained at the top of the game in spite of certain marketers undermining its influence.  They aren’t slowing down anytime soon. Opportunities are on the rise, and Marketing in Social Media isn’t going anywhere. Correction: Marketing in Social Media is actually going everywhere!

As work is increasing in futurON, so is the need to increase bandwidth of talent. We are constantly scouting for new talent in social media – from strategist, content writer to analyst. Therefore, obviously, we are lucky to find some interesting talent out there…but on the flipside we are also seeing what’s lacking in the pool of candidates who are looking for social media work.

This blog is an attempt to help those who want to seriously work within the social media industry and get picked by companies with real social media plans!

Before you decide to scout for a social media role, ask yourself – WHY?

1) Are you looking to get into social media because you have tons of Facebook friends and you think ”this translates into talent”?
2) Is it because social media is being spoken about everywhere and is the ‘in thing’?
3) Is it because you think that a social media job = chilling on your favourite social platform all day long updating status messages?
4) Is it because you are under 25 and that’s all you need?

Well – I really hope you can see where I am going with this. Clearly social media marketing entails much more than status updates and needs talent beyond your friends/family list on Facebook.

I am not going to discuss how much goes into developing social media marketing strategies and execution plans, instead I would like to help explain how you can get that social media role that you are applying for… knowing that you can achieve results in that role for the organization.

Well, for starters since you are applying for a social media role – please take it for granted that sending in your resume and covering letter with references will just not suffice. Your online profile will be scrutinized for knowledge, content, writing skills, frequency, influence, and more. And trust me – competition is TIGHT!

So here are a few pointers to help you out:

1) What does Google have to say about you?

When someone types your name on a search engine like Google/Bing/Yahoo – what comes up first? Is it an embarrassing photo of you in a party or is it a professional picture of you in a conference or is it your adventurous hiking pose or are you just completely absent!

2) Is your knowledge beyond the big three or four platforms?

There is a world beyond Facebook and Twitter! How do your profiles look in platforms like Slideshare, Pinterest, WordPress, LinkedIn? Each of these platforms can actually give a 360 degree brand image around your personality – what you read, what you ‘like’, what you pin, whether you have an opinion at all, what are your values and what defines you.

Believe it or not – your online profile is like a horoscope that can make or break your career.

3) Have you showcased your knowledge or opinion – are you passionate?

Whether you want to become a content writer or a social media analyst – you have to start writing in some form or the other. So once you start doing that, what stands out is – what kind of knowledge are you sharing? Is your writing style safe or edgy? Do you have opinions on things that matter? Are you passionate?

4) Is your content original

There is only that much you can do with retweets and liking other blogs. How original is your content? Are you commenting on other links – beyond a compliment or complain? Are you just copy-pasting stuff across the web to create a fake identity? Do ‘YOU’ exist in your content? Are you worth hiring full-time for a company?

5) Does it look like you are enjoying it?

Are you having fun with what you do? Do you enjoy using creative platforms, new blogs, and exciting Instagram pictures? If you enjoy and make being ‘online savvy’ a hobby – any company would love to have you and your enthusiasm on board.

I understand that some might say that doing all of the above could be risky since you are just putting yourself out there – more than just a resume. But at the end of the day, if you are not confident in your own skin (there really is no point hiding behind a covering letter), it will show eventually – whether it’s at the first or last stage of the interview process – or even after you get hired.

Don’t waste your time and the recruiter’s time – make sure you really enjoy social media before you apply for that job. Since it really is beyond status messages!

Do you have any more points to add? What are your thoughts? Trust me – I can’t wait to hear more on this topic, so please leave your comments below – look forward to it!

Disclaimer : All images posted are on third party websites. Copyrights as applicable.